Penny's poetry pages Wiki
in: Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters, Articles with hCards, Articles using Wikipedia text,
and 13 more

William Stanley Braithwaite

Edit

William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite (December 6, 1878 - June 8, 1962) was an African-American poet, prose writer, academic, and literary critic.

William Stanley Braithwaite

William Stanley Braithwaite (1878-1962) in 1947. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite
Born December 6, 1878
Boston, Massachusetts[1]
Died June 8, 1962 (aged 83)
New York City[1]
Spouse Emma Kelly[1]
Children Fiona Rossetti Braithwaite (Carter), Katherine Keats Braithwaite (Arnold), Cayman Braithwaite (Agard). William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite, Jr., Paul Ledoux Braithwaite, Arnold D. Braithwaite.[1]

Life[]

Youth and education[]

Braithwaite was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1878.[2] According to Jill Lepore, his father "came from a wealthy British Guiana family; his mother was the daughter of a North Carolina slave."[3]

His father preferred that the children be educated at home, and until his untimely death, they were raised in a genteel household of means.

Career[]

At the age of 12, upon the death of his father, Braithwaite was forced to quit school to support his family. When he was aged 15 he was apprenticed to a typesetter for the Boston publisher, Ginn & Co.,[4] where he discovered an affinity for lyric poetry and began to write his own poems.

Braithwaite married Emma Kelly in 1903; they had 7 children.[1]

After early publications in periodicals, he published his debut collection of 63 poems, Lyrics of Life and Love, at the age of 26 in 1904.[5] From 1901 to 1902, Braithwaite served as an editor of the Boston-published Colored American Magazine. By 1906 he had been accepted as a member of the prestigious Boston Authors Club.[5]

From 1905[5] to 1931 he wrote for The Boston Evening Transcript,[6] contributing columns about contemporary poets and an annual survey of the field. He also wrote articles, reviews and poetry for many other periodicals and journals, including the Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, New York Times, The New Republic, The Crisis, Opportunity, and Colored American Magazine.[5] He also began publishing anthologies on poetry of various periods, such as the Georgian and Elizabethan eras.[4]

The surveys that Braithwaite published in the Boston Evening Transcript led him to begin his most important life work: publishing an annual anthology of "Magazine Verse."[5] These anthologies covered a wide range of poets, from the conservative to the avant-garde, the established to the new, as well as an introduction in which Braithwaite discussed his perspective on the current state of poetry.[5] The works published were culled from both commercial magazines and modernist little magazines. They also included indexes of published verse and other information that provided insight into publishing trends of the day.[5] Braithwaite indicated favored works in these lists with an asterisk, establishing in this way his own "canon" of poets and poems.[5]

Though Braithwaite has been received with ambivalence by African-American critics from his own lifetime to today for his lack of discussion of African-American issues in both his verse and anthologies, his anthologies are notable for their inclusion of African-American writers:[5] he is recognized as having a significant role in publishing Harlem Renaissance poets for a wide audience through his anthologies, despite his own conservatism in discussing race in his own work.

The success and influence of Braithwaite's anthology series may be seen in its growing length: the inaugural issue was 87 pages in length, while the 15th reached more than 1,000.[5] Though influential, however, the anthologies were not moneymakers; they were published by 5 different houses over the years, and unlike some anthologies of the time, did not receive payment for including a poet's work.[7]

Braithwaite launched a periodical, Poetry Journal, in December 1912, but not long after, handed off the project to others.[5] He launched another periodical, the monthly Poetry Review of America, in 1916; this project folded after less than a year.[8]

In 1921 Braithwaite established the B.J. Brimmer publishing company, which published poetry, non-fiction, and anthologies. His business partner and treasurer of the company was writer and poet Winifred Virginia Jackson,[7] known for her collaborations with H.P. Lovecraft.(Citation needed)

In 1935, Braithwaite assumed a professorship of creative literature at the historically Black Atlanta University. He retired from this position in 1945. In 1946, he and his family moved to Sugar Hill in Harlem, New York where Braithwaite continued to write and publish poetry, essays and anthologies. He was often alienated from his colleagues at the university due to his lack of any formal education or degrees and what was seen as his "standoffish" nature.[9]

He died at his home at 409 Edgecombe Avenue home in Harlem after a brief illness on June 8, 1962.[1]

Writing[]

James Weldon Johnson acknowledged Braithwaite as an influence upon his work.[5]

Recognition[]

In 1918 Braithwaite was awarded the Spingarn Medal[1] by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In popular culture[]

In 1927, poet Countee Cullen dedicated the anthology Caroling Dusk: An anthology of Negro poets]] to Braithwaite.[5]

Publications[]

Poetry[]

Non-fiction[]

  • John Myers O'Hara and the Grecian Influence. Portland, ME: Smith and Sale, 1926.
  • The Bewitched Parsonage: The story of the Brontes. New York: Coward-McCann, 1950.

Juvenile[]

  • The Story of the Great War. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1919.

Edited[]

Anthology of Magazine Verse[]

  • Anthology of Magazine Verse for [1913-1929] and Yearbook of American poetry. New York: G. Sully, [1913-1929].

Collected editions[]


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[12]

See also[]

References[]

Fonds[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 The New York Times (June 9, 1962), William Braithwaite, 83, Dead; A Poet, Anthologist and Critic; Compiled Seventeen Volumes of 'Magazine Verse Won Spingarn Medal in 1918, New York, NY: The New York Times., p. 25 
  2. ↑ "William Braithwaite, 83, Dead; A Poet, Anthologist and Critic; Compiled Seventeen Volumes of 'Magazine Verse Won Spingarn Medal in 1918" (in en-US). The New York Times: p. 25. 1962-06-09. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/1962/06/09/archives/william-braithwaite-83-dead-a-poet-anthologist-and-critic-compiled.html. 
  3. ↑ Jill Lepore, "Joe Gould's Teeth", The New Yorker, July 27, 2015 issue.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Wintz, Cary D.; Finkelman, Paul (2004) (in en). Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance: A-J. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-57958-457-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=z6Cs0Y1pvRAC&q=%22b.j.+brimmer%22+braithwaite&pg=PA176. 
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 Williams, Kenny J. (Summer 1987). "An Invisible Partnership and an Unlikely Relationship: William Stanley Braithwaite and Harriet Monroe". Callaloo 32 (32): 516–550. doi:10.2307/2930466. JSTOR 2930466. 
  6. ↑ Biography from the NYPL Inventory of the William Stanley Braithwaite Papers, 1902–1976
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Hutchinson, George (1995) (in en). The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-37262-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=4g3r4uqthjAC&q=%22b.j.+brimmer%22+braithwaite&pg=PA359. 
  8. ↑ "The Poetry Review of America" (in en). 2016-06-17. https://modernistmagazines.org/american/the-poetry-review-of-america/. 
  9. ↑ Butcher, Philip (1971). "William Stanley Braithwaite and the College Language Association". CLA Journal 15 (2): 117–125. ISSN 0007-8549. JSTOR 44321546. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44321546. 
  10. ↑ Lyrics of Life and Love (1904), Internet Archive. Web, Apr. 1, 2013.
  11. ↑ The House of Falling Leaves, with other poems (1908), Internet Archive. Web, Apr. 1, 2013.
  12. ↑ Search results = au:William Stanley Braithwaite, WorldCat, OCLC, Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Apr. 1, 2013.

External links[]

Poems
Books
About
This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia. (view article). (view authors).
Authority control
Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.