Richard Henry Stoddard

Richard Henry Stoddard (1825-1903), from Recollections: Personal and literary, 1903. Courtesy Internet Archive.

Richard Henry Stoddard (July 2, 1825 - May 12, 1903) was an American poet and literary critic.

Life

Overview

Stoddard was born at Hingham, Massachusetts. He worked in a foundry, and afterwards in New York Custom House. He wrote a Life of Washington, but is chiefly known as a poet, his poetical works including Songs in Summer (1857), The King's Bell, The Lions Cub, etc.

Youth

Stoddard as a young man. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Stoddard was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, on 2 July 1825. He spent most of his boyhood in New York City, where he became a blacksmith and later an iron moulder.

Career

In 1849 Stoddard gave up his trade and began to write for a living. He contributed to the Union Magazine, the Knickerbocker Magazine, Putnam's Monthly Magazine, and the New York Evening Post.

He married Elizabeth Drew (Barstow) in 1852. The couple settled permanently in New York City, where they belonged to New York's vibrant, close-knit literary and artistic circles.

The couple had 3 children, 2 of whom died as infants. The 3rd child, Edwin Lorimer "Lorry" Stoddard (1863-1901), also wrote poetry.

In 1853 Nathaniel Hawthorne helped him to secure the appointment of inspector of customs of the Port of New York.

Stoddard was confidential clerk to George B. McClellan in the New York dock department in 1870-1872, and city librarian of New York in 1874-1875; literary reviewer for the New York World (1860-1870); an editor of Vanity Fair; editor of the Aldine (1869-1874), and literary editor of the Mail and Express (1880-1903).

Among the numerous books that he edited are The Loves and Heroines of the Poets (1861); Melodies and Madrigals: Mostly from the old English poets (1865); The Late English Poets (1865), selections; Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America (1872) and Female Poets of America (1874); The 'Bric-a-Brac' Series, in 10 volumes (1874-1876); English Verse, in 5 volumes, edited with W.J. Linton (1883); and 4 editions of Poe's works, with a memoir (1872-1894).

His wife died in New York on 1 August 1902. He died in New York on 12 May 1903.

Writing

His original poetry includes Footprints (1849), privately printed and afterwards suppressed; Poems (1852); the juveniles, Adventures in Fairyland (1853); Town and Country (1857), and The Story of Little Red Riding Hood (1864); Songs of Summer (1857); The King's Bell (1862), a popular narrative poem; Abraham Lincoln: A Horatian ode (1865), The Book of the East (1867), Poems (1880), a collective edition; and The Lion's Cub, with other verse (1890).

He also wrote Life, Travels and Books of Alexander von Humboldt (1860); Under the Evening Lamp (1892), essays dealing mainly with the modern English poets; and Recollections Personal and Literary (1903), edited by Ripley Hitchcock.

More important than his critical was his poetical work, which at its best is sincere, original and marked by delicate fancy, and felicity of form; and his songs have given him a high and permanent place among American lyric poets.

Recognition

His 1857 poem "Roses and Thorns", in a Russian translation by Aleksey Pleshcheyev, was set for voice and piano by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as "Legend", No. 5 from "Sixteen Songs for Children", Op. 54. The song, in turn, was the basis of Anton Arensky's Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky, Op. 35a, for string orchestra.

Publications

Poetry

• Footprints (1849), privately printed and afterwards suppressed by the author
• Poems. Boston, Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1851 [1852].
• Town and Country; and, The voices in the shells. New York: Dix, Edwards, 1857.
• Songs of Summer. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1857.
• The King's Bell (long poem). New York, Carleton, 1863. London: Basil Montagu, Pickering, 1864.
• "Under Green Leaves": A book of rural poems. New York: Bunce & Huntington, 1865.
• Abraham Lincoln: A Horatian ode. New York: Bunce & Huntington, 1865.
• The Book of the East, and other poems. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1871.
• Poems. New York: Scribner, 1880.
• The Lion's Cub, with other verse. New York: Scribner, 1890; London: Elkin Mathews, 1891.

Non-fiction

• The Life, Travels and Books of Alexander von Humboldt. New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1860; London: Sampson Low, 1860.
• Personal Recollections of Lamb, Hazlitt, and others. New York: Scribner, Armstrong, 1875.
• Poets' Homes: Pen and pencil sketches of American poets and their homes. Boston: D. Lothrop, 1877.
• Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Scribner, 1879.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: A medley in prose and verse. New York: G.W. Harlan, 1882.
• The Life of Washington Irving. New York: Alden, 1883
  • Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions, 1975.
• Under the Evening Lamp (essays dealing mainly with contemporary English poets). New York: Scribner, 1892; London: Gay & Bird, 1893.
• Recollections: Personal and literary (edited by Ripley Hitchcock; introduction by Edmund Clarence Stedman). New York: A.S. Barnes, 1903. London: Author's Syndicate, 1903; New York: AMS Press, 1971.

Juvenile

• Adventures in Fairyland. Boston : Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1853.
• The Story of Little Red Riding Hood: Told in verse (illustrated by Alfred Fredericks). New York: J.C. Gregory, 1864.
• The Story of Putnam the Brave (illustrated by Alfred Fredericks). Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1876.

Edited

• The Loves and Heroines of the Poets. New York: Derby & Jackson, 1861.
• The Late English Poets. New York: Routledge, 1865.
• Melodies and Madrigals: Mostly from the old English poets. New York: Bunce & Huntington, 1866.
• Rufus W. Griswold, The Poets and Poetry of America. New York, J. Miller, 1872.
• Rufus W. Griswold, The Female Poets of America. New York, J. Miller, 1873 [1874]
• Anecdote Biographies of Thackeray and Dickens. New York: Scribner, Armstrong, 1874.
• Anecdote Biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley. New York: Scribner, Armstrong, 1877.
• English Verse (edited with W.J. Linton). (5 volumes), New York: Scribner, 1883; London: Kegan Paul, 1883. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV, Volume V.
• Readings and Recitations from Modern Authors: Being pearls gathered from the fields of poetry and romance (edited with Elizabeth Stoddard). Chicago & New York: Belford, Clarke, 1884.
• The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (edited with an introduction & memoir by Stoddart). (6 volumes), New York: A.C. Armstrong, 1884; London: Routledge, 1896. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV, Volume V, Volume VI.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

The Flight of Youth --- R.H. Stoddard

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

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Stoddard, Richard Henry". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 939. . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 6, 2018.

External links

Poems

• Richard Henry Stoddard in An American Anthology 1787-1900: "The Witches' Whelp, " "Melodies and Catches," "The Flight of Youth," "Oriental Songs," "The Lover," "Abraham Lincoln," "Adsum," "An Old Song Reversed," "Mors et Vita," "A Gazelle," "The Flight of the Arrow,"
• Richard Henry Stoddard at PoemHunter (18 poems)

Books

• Works by Richard Henry Stoddard at Project Gutenberg
• Richard Henry Stoddard at Amazon.com

About

• Richard Henry Stoddard in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Richard Henry Stoddard at NNDB
• Stoddart, Richard Henry (1825-1903) at The Vault at Pfaff's
• Richard Henry Stoddard in the Cambridge History of English and American Literature

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.. Original article is at "Stoddard, Richard Henry"