Ellery Channing

William Ellery Channing (1818-1891), from The Life of Henry David Thoreau, 1896. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

William Ellery Channing
Born	November 29, 1818 Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Died	December 23, 1901(1901-Template:MONTHNUMBER-23) (aged 83) Concord, Massachusetts, United States
Occupation	Poet

William Ellery Channing (November 29, 1818 - December 23, 1901) was a transcendentalist American poet. .

Life

Overview

Channing was a nephew of the Unitarian preacher Dr. William Ellery Channing (usually known as "Dr. Channing," while the nephew was commonly called "Ellery Channing" in print).

The younger Ellery Channing was thought brilliant but undisciplined by many of his contemporaries. Amos Bronson Alcott famously said of him in 1871, "Whim, thy name is Channing." Nevertheless, the Transcendentalists thought his poetry among the best of their group's literary products

Channing was for a time a minister in the Congregationalist Church, but became the leader of the Unitarians in New England. He had a powerful influence on the thought and literature of his time in America, and was the author of books on Milton and Fénelon, and on social subjects. The elevation and amiability of his character caused him to be held in high esteem. He did not class himself with Unitarians of the school of Priestley, but claimed to "stand aloof from all but those who strive and pray for clearer light."

Youth and education

Channing was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Dr. Walter Channing, a physician and Harvard Medical School professor. He attended Boston Latin School and later the Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts. He entered Harvard University in 1834, but did not graduate.

Career

In 1839 he lived for some months in Woodstock, Illinois in a log hut that he built; in 1840 he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1841 he married Ellen Fuller, the younger sister of transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, and they began their married life in Concord, Massachusetts, where they lived a half-mile north of The Old Manse as Nathaniel Hawthorne's neighbor.

In Concord he devoted himself to poetry and chopping wood. He was befriended by Henry David Thoreau, and praised and often published in The Dial by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Channing wrote to Thoreau in a letter: "I see nothing for you on this earth but that field which I once christened 'Briars;' go out upon that, build yourself a hut, and there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no alternative, no other hope for you." Thoreau adopted this advice, and shortly after built his famous dwelling beside Walden Pond. Some speculation identifies Channing as the "Poet" of Thoreau's Walden; the two were frequent walking companions.

In 1843 he moved to a hill-top in Concord, some distance from the village, and published his first volume of poems, reprinting several from The Dial. Thoreau called his literary style "sublimo-slipshod".

In 1844-1845, Channing separated from his family and restarted his wandering, unanchored life. He first spent some months in New York City as a writer for the Tribune, after which he made a journey to Europe for several months. In 1846 he returned to Concord and lived alone on the main street, opposite the house occupied by the Thoreau family and then by Alcott. During much of this time he had no fixed occupation, though for a while, in 1855-1856, he was one of the editors of the New Bedford Mercury. After enumerating his various wanderings, places of residence, and rare intervals of employment, his housemate Franklin Benjamin Sanborn wrote of him:

In all these wanderings and residences his artist eye was constantly seeking out the finest landscapes, and his sauntering habit was to take his friends and introduce them to scenery they could hardly have found for themselves. He showed Thoreau the loveliest recesses of the Concord woods, and of the two rivers that came slowly through them; he preceded Thoreau at Yarmouth and Truro and the Highland shore of Cape Cod; and he even taught Emerson the intimate charm of regions in Concord and Sudbury which he, the older resident and unwearied walker, had never beheld.... In mountain-climbing and in summer visits to the wilder parts of New England he preceded Thoreau, being more at leisure in his youth, and less bound by those strict habits of study which were native to Thoreau all his life.

In 1873, Channing was the first biographer of Thoreau, publishing Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist.

Death

File:WilliamElleryChanningJrGrave.jpg

Channing's grave

Channing died December 23, 1901 in Concord. He is buried at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord on Author's Ridge directly facing his longtime friend Thoreau.

Writing

Critic Edgar Allan Poe was particularly harsh in reviewing Channing's poetry in a series of articles titled "Our Amateur Poets" published in Graham's Magazine in 1843. He wrote, "It may be said in his favor that nobody ever heard of him. Like an honest woman, he has always succeeded in keeping himself from being made the subject of gossip". A critic for the Daily Forum in Philadelphia agreed with Poe, though he was surprised Poe bothered reviewing Channing at all. He wrote: "Mr. Poe, the most hyper-critical writer of this meridian, cuts the poetry of William Ellery Channing, Junior, if not into inches, at least into feet. Mr. C's poetry is very trashy, and we should as soon expect to hear Bryant writing sonnets on a lollypop as to see Mr. Poe gravely attempt to criticize the volume."

Publications

Poetry

• Poems. Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1843.
• Poems, Second Series. 1847
• The Woodman and other poems. Boston: James Munroe, 1849.
• Near Home: A poem. Boston: James Munroe, 1858.
• The Wanderer: A colloquial poem. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1871.
• Eliot: A poem. Boston: Cupples, Upham, 1885.
• Poems of Sixty-five Years (edited by F.B. Sanborn). Philadelphia & Concord, NH: James H, Bentley, 1902.

Non-fiction

• Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist, with memorial verses. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1873; Boston: C.E. Goodspeed, 1902;
• John Brown and the Heroes of Harper's Ferry. 1886.

=Collected editions

• Works. Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1903. Volume 5

Edited

• Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods (edited with Sophia E. Thoreau). Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1864.
• Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod (edited with Sophia E. Thoreau). Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1865.

  

  "Sea Song" by William Ellery Channing

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Harvard Square Library.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• "My Symphony" at Your Daily Poem
• Channing, William Ellery II at the Harvard Square Library (3 poems)
• William Ellery Channing at PoemHunter (14 poems)
• William Ellery Channing at AllPoetry (15 poems)
• Ellery Channing poems at American Transcendental Web

Prose

• Ellery Channing Remembers Henry Thoreau

Books

• William Ellery Channing at Amazon.com
• William Ellery Channing (II) in the Houghton-Mifflin Chronology of U.S. Literature.
• Manuscript Collection with a brief Channing biography from the Concord Free Public Libraries

About

• William Ellery Channing (1818-1901) at the American Transcendentalism Web