Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) in Literary Hearthstones of Dixie by Lasalle Pickett (1912). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Sidney Lanier
Born	March 3, 1842(1842-Template:MONTHNUMBER-03) Macon, Georgia
Died	July 7, 1881(1881-Template:MONTHNUMBER-07) (aged 39) Lynn, North Carolina
Occupation	Poet, musician, academic
Nationality	American
Period	1867 - 1881

Sidney Clopton Lanier (February 3, 1842 - September 7, 1881) was an American poet, musician, and academic.

Life

Overview

Lanier, son of a lawyer of Huguenot descent, was born at Macon, Georgia. He had a varied career, having been successively soldier, shopman, teacher, lawyer, musician, and profesor. His 1st literary venture was a novel, Tiger Lilies (1867). Thereafter he wrote mainly on literature, his works including The Science of English Verse (1881), The English Novel (1883), and Shakespeare and his Forerunners (1902); also some poems which have been greatly admired, including "Corn," "The Marshes of Glynn," and "The Song of the Chattahoochee"; editions of Froissart, and the Welsh Mabinogion for children. He worked under the shadow of serious lung trouble, which eventually brought about his death.

Youth

Lanier was born in Macon, Georgia, to parents Mary Jane (Anderson) and Robert Sampson Lanier; he was mostly of English ancestry. His distant French Huguenot ancestors immigrated to England in the 16th century fleeing religious persecution. He began playing the flute at an early age, and his love of that musical instrument continued throughout his life. He attended Oglethorpe University near Milledgeville, Georgia, where he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He graduated first in his class shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War.

War

He fought in the Civil War, primarily in the tidewater region of Virginia, where he served in the Confederate signal corps. Later, he and his brother Clifford served as pilots aboard English blockade runners. On one of these voyages, his ship was boarded. Refusing to take the advice of the British officers on board to don one of their uniforms and pretend to be one of them, he was captured. He was incarcerated in a military prison at Point Lookout in Maryland, where he contracted tuberculosis (generally known as "consumption" at the time). He suffered greatly from this disease, then incurable and usually fatal, for the rest of his life.

Career

File:Sidney Lanier.jpg

Sidney Lanier

Shortly after the war, he taught school briefly, then moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where he worked as a desk clerk at The Exchange Hotel and also performed as a musician. He was the regular organist at The First Presbyterian Church in nearby Prattville. He wrote his only novel, Tiger Lilies (1867) while in Alabama. In 1867, he moved to Prattville, at that time a small town just north of Montgomery, where he taught and served as principal of a school.

He married Mary Day of Macon in 1876 and moved back to his hometown, where he began working in his father's law office.

After taking and passing the Georgia bar, Lanier practiced as a lawyer for several years. During this period he wrote a number of poems, using the "cracker" and "negro" dialects of his day, about poor white and black farmers in the Reconstruction South. He traveled extensively through southern and eastern portions of the United States in search of a cure for his tuberculosis.

While on one such journey in Texas, he rediscovered his native and untutored talent for the flute and decided to travel to the northeast in hopes of finding employment as a musician in an orchestra. Unable to find work in New York, Philadelphia, or Boston, he signed on to play flute for the Peabody Orchestra in Baltimore, Maryland, shortly after its organization. He taught himself musical notation and quickly rose to the position of 1st flautist. He was famous in his day for his performances of a personal composition for the flute called "Black Birds," which mimics the song of that species.

In an effort to support Mary and their 3 sons, he also wrote poetry for magazines.

Later life

Late in his life, he became a student, lecturer, and, finally, a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, specializing in the works of the English novelists, Shakespeare, the Elizabethan sonneteers, Chaucer, and the Anglo-Saxon poets. He published a series of lectures entitled The English Novel (published posthumously in 1883) and a book entitled The Science of English Verse (1880), in which he developed a novel theory exploring the connections between musical notation and meter in poetry.

Lanier finally succumbed to complications caused by his tuberculosis on September 7, 1881, while convalescing with his family near Lynn, North Carolina. He was 39. Lanier is buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.

Writing

With his theory connecting musical notation with poetic meter, he developed a unique style of poetry written in logaoedic dactyls, which was strongly influenced by the works of his beloved Anglo-Saxon poets. He wrote several of his greatest poems in this meter, including "Revenge of Hamish" (1878), "The Marshes of Glynn" and "Sunrise". In Lanier's hands, the logaoedic dactylic meter led to a free-form, almost prose-like style of poetry that was greatly admired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Bayard Taylor, and other leading poets and critics of the day. A similar poetical meter was independently developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins at about the same time. (There is no evidence that Lanier and Hopkins knew each other or that either of them had read any of the other's works).

His most famous poems were "Corn" (1875), "The Symphony" (1875), "Centennial Meditation" (1876), "The Song of the Chattahoochee" (1877), "The Marshes of Glynn" (1878), and "Sunrise" (1881). The latter 2 poems, generally considered his greatest works, are part of an unfinished set of lyrical nature poems known as the "Hymns of the Marshes", which describe the vast, open salt marshes of Glynn co. on the coast of Georgia.

Recognition

1972 Lanier postage stamp

Lanier is commemorated by a large and elaborate bronze and granite sculptural monument, created by Hans K. Schuler and located on the campus of Johns Hopkins University.

There is a historical marker in Brunswick commemorating the writing of "The Marshes of Glynn". The largest bridge in Georgia (as of 2005), a short distance from the marker, is named The Sidney Lanier Bridge.

On the construction of the iconic Duke Chapel between 1930 and 1935 on the est campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, a statue of Lanier was included alongside 2 fellow prominent Southerners, Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee. This statue, which appears to show a Lanier older than the 39 years he actually lived, is situated on the right side of the portico leading into the Chapel narthex. It is prominently featured on the cover of the 2010 autobiographical memoir, Hannah's Child, by Stanley Hauerwas, a Methodist theologian teaching at Duke Divinity School.

Geography

Several places have been named for Lanier:

• Lanier Heights Neighborhood, Washington, D.C.
• Lanier County, Georgia
• Lake Lanier, operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers northeast of Atlanta, Georgia
• Lake Lanier in Tryon, North Carolina
• Sydney Lanier Bridge, Brunswick, Georgia

Schools

• Sidney Lanier School] in Gainesville, Florida
• Lanier University, short-lived university, first Baptist, then owned by the Ku Klux Klan, in Atlanta, Georgia
• The Sidney Lanier Building (previously Sidney Lanier Elementary School) on the campus of Glynn Academy, in Brunswick, Georgia
• Lanier Middle School in Buford, Georgia
• Lanier Elementary School in Gainesville, Georgia
• Sidney Lanier Bridge over the South Brunswick River in Brunswick, Georgia
• Sidney Lanier Elementary School in Tulsa, Oklahoma
• Sidney Lanier High School in Austin, Texas
• Sidney Lanier Expressive Arts Vanguard Elementary School in Dallas, Texas
• Lanier Middle School in Houston, Texas
• Lanier High School in San Antonio, Texas
• Lanier Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia
• Sidney Lanier Elementary School in Tampa, Florida

Other

• Sidney Lanier Cottage, the birthplace of Lanier, in Macon, Georgia

In popular culture

Lanier's poem "The Marshes of Glynn" is the inspiration for a cantata by the same name that was created by the modern English composer Andrew Downes to celebrate the Royal Opening of the Adrian Boult Hall in Birmingham, England, in 1986.

Piers Anthony used Lanier's life and poetry in his science-fiction novel Macroscope (1969). He quotes from "The Marshes of Glynn," and other references appear throughout the novel.

Publications

Poetry

• The Centennial Meditation of Columbia: A cantata for the inaugural ceremonies. New York: Scribner, 1876.
• Poems. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1877.
• Poems (edited by Mary Day Lanier). New York: Scribners, 1884
  • revised and enlarged, New York: Scribners, 1891
  • revised and enlarged, New York: Scribner, 1916
• Select Poems of Sidney Lanier (edited by Morgan Callaway). New York: Scribner, 1899.
• Hymns of the Marshes. New York: Scribners, 1907.
• Poem Outlines. New York: Scribners, 1908.

Novel

• Tiger-Lilies: A novel. New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1867.

Non-fiction

• Florida: Its scenery, climate, and history; with an account of Charleston, Savannah, Augusta, and Aiken; A chapter for consumptives; various papers on fruit-culture; and a complete handbook and guide. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1876.
• The Science of English Verse. New York: Scribner, 1880.
• The English Novel and the Principle of Its Development. New York: Scribner, 1883
  • revised as The English Novel: A study in the development of personality. New York: Scribner, 1897.
• Music and Poetry: Essays upon some aspects and inter-relations of the two arts. New York: Scribner, 1898.
• Retrospects and Prospects: Descriptive and historical essays. New York: Scribner, 1899.
• Bob, The Story of Our Mocking-Bird. New York: Scribner, 1899.

Books on Shakespeare

• Shakspere and His Forerunners: Studies in Elizabethan poetry and its development from early English. New York: Scribner, 1902.

Juvenile

• The Boy's Froissart: Being Sir John Froissart's 'Chronicles', edited for boys. New York: Scribner, 1879.
• The Boy's King Arthur: Being Sir Thomas Malory's 'History of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table', edited for boys. New York: Scribner, 1880.
• The Boy's Mabinogion: Being the earliest Welsh tales of King Arthur in the famous 'Red Book of Horgest', edited for boys. New York: Scribner, 1881.
• The Boy's Percy: Being old ballads of war, adventure, and love from Bishop Thomas Percy's 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry', edited for boys. New York: Scribner, 1882.

Collected editions

• The Lanier Book: Selections in prose and verse from the writings of Sidney Lanier (edited by Mary E. Burt). New York: Scribner, 1909.
• Selections from Sidney Lanier: Prose and verse. New York & Chicago: Scribner, 1916.

Letters

• Letters of Sidney Lanier: Selections from his correspondence, 1866-1881. New York: Scribner's, 1899.
• Some reminiscences and early letters of Sidney Lanier. Macon, GA: J.W. Burke, 1907.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

See also

The Marshes of Glynn by Sidney Lanier

• List of U.S. poets

References

Fonds

• Sidney Lanier papers at Johns Hopkins University

External links

Poems

• 2 poems by Lanier: "June Dreams, in January," "Wedding Hymn"
• Sidney Lanier profile and 2 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• Lanier, Sidney (1842-1881) (2 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Sidney Lanier 1842-1881 at the Poetry Foundation
• Sidney Lanier at PoemHunter (96 poems)
• Sidney Lanier at AllPoetry (98 poems)

Prose

• Lanier On The Runaway Slaves at Fort Gadsden Sidney Lanier describes the history of a fascinating fort commandeered by runaway slaves.
• Sidney Lanier on the Fate of the Seminoles

Books

• Works by Sidney Lanier at Project Gutenberg (plain text & HTML)
• Works by Sidney Lanier at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Sidney Lanier at Amazon.com

About

• Sidney Lanier in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Sidney Lanier at NNDB.
• Sidney Lanier in The New Georgia Encyclopedia
• Sidney Lanier at the Encyclopedia of Alabama
• Sidney Lanier at Find a Grave
• A Biography Of Sidney Lanier at Project Gutenberg
• Sidney Lanier Cottage House Museum in Macon, Georgia
• This article uses text from the New World Encyclopedia