John Peale Bishop

John Peale Bishop (1892-1944). Courtesy AllPoetry.

John Peale Bishop (May 21, 1892 - April 4, 1944) was an American poet and literary critic.

Life

Bishop was born in Charles Town, West Virginia, to a family from New England, and attended school in Hagerstown, Maryland. When 18, Bishop fell victim to a severe illness and lost his sight for some time. He entered Princeton University in 1913, at age 21, where he became friends with Edmund Wilson and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He graduated from Princeton in 1917 and served with the army for 2 years in Europe..

Upon return to the United States, he wrote poetry, as well as essays and reviews for Vanity Fair in New York City. In 1922 he married Margaret Hutchins, and they soon moved to France where they lived until 1933, punctuated by a stint for Paramount Pictures in New York (1925-1926). While in France they bought the Château de Tressancourt at Orgeval, Seine et Oise (near Paris), where they raised 3 sons.

In 1933 his family returned to the United States, residing in Connecticut, then New Orleans, and finally in a house on Cape Cod. His novel Act of Darkness, based on the true story of the rape of a prominent Charles Town social figure by a local Charles Town man, caused a scandal in the town when it was published.

Bishop became chief poetry reviewer for The Nation in 1940. In 1941-1942 he served as publications director in the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, and was then invited to be Resident Fellow at the Library of Congress. He died within a few months of his appointment, on April 4, 1944, in Hyannis, Massachusetts.

Recognition

In popular culture

Bishop was the model for the character Thomas Parke D'Invilliers in F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise.

Publications

Poetry

• Green Fruit. Boston: Sherman, French, 1917.
• The Undertaker's Garland (with Edmund Wilson; illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff). New York: Knopf, 1922.
• Now With His Love. New York & London: Scribner, 1933.
• Minute Particulars. Alcestis Press, 1935.
• Selected Poems of John Peale Bishop (edited by Allen Tate. New York: Scribner, 1941; London: Chatto & Windus, 1941.
• The Collected Poems of John Peale Bishop (edited by Allen Tate). New York & London: Scribner, 1948.

Novel

• Act of Darkness. New York: Scribner, 1935; New York: Avon, 1970.

Short fiction

• Many Thousands Gone. New York: Scribner, 1931.

Non-fiction

• The Collected Essays of John Peale Bishop (edited by Edmund Wilson). New York & London: Scribner, 1948.

Letters

• The Republic of Letters in America: The correspondence of John Peale Bishop and Allen Tate (edited by Thomas Daniel Young; John J Hindle). Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1981.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Audio / video

Speaking of Poetry by John Peale Bishop

• Recordings of Poets Reading Their Own Poems: John Peale Bishop and Maxwell Bodenheim (LP). Washington, DC: Library of Congress Recording Laboratory, 1961.

See also

• List of U.S. poets
• List of literary critics

References

• Spindler, Elizabeth Carroll. John Peale Bishop: A biography. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University, 1980.

External links

Poems

• "The Hunchback" in Poetry: A magazine of verse, 1912-1922.
• "Cravings"
• John Peale Bishop at AllPoetry (6 poems)

Prose

• "The Golden Bough" (.PDF)

Audio / video

• John Peale Bishop at YouTube

Books

• John Peale Bishop at Amazon.com

About

• John Peale Bishop in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• John Peale Bishop (1892-1944) at Perspectives in American Literature
• Bishop, John Peale at Princeton University
• John Peale Bishop in the Houghton Mifflin Chronology of American Literature
• John Peale Bishop at eNotes.