James Russell Lowell
James
Russell Lowell, (b. Feb. 22, 1819,
Cambridge, Mass., U.S.—d. Aug. 12, 1891,
Cambridge), American poet, critic,
essayist, editor, and diplomat whose
major significance probably lies in the
interest in literature he helped develop
in the United States. He was a highly
influential man of letters in his day,
but his reputation declined in the 20th
century.
A
member of a distinguished New England
family, Lowell graduated from Harvard in
1838 and in 1840 took his degree in law,
though his academic career had been
lacklustre and he did not care to
practice law for a profession. In 1844
he was married to the gifted poet Maria
White, who had inspired his poems in A
Year’s Life (1841) and who would help
him channel his energies into fruitful
directions.
In 1845
Lowell published Conversations on Some
of the Old Poets, a collection of
critical essays that included pleas for
the abolition of slavery. From 1845 to
1850 he wrote about 50 antislavery
articles for periodicals. Even more
effective in this regard were his Biglow
Papers, which he began to serialize June
17, 1846, and the first series of which
were collected in book form in 1848. In
these satirical verses, Lowell uses a
humorous and original New England
dialect to express his opposition to the
Mexican War as an attempt to extend the
area of slavery. The year 1848 also saw
the publication of Lowell’s two other
most important pieces of writing: The
Vision of Sir Launfal, an enormously
popular long poem extolling the
brotherhood of man; and A Fable for
Critics, a witty and rollicking verse
evaluation of contemporary American
authors. These books, together with the
publication that year of the second
series of his Poems, made Lowell the
most popular new figure in American
literature.
The
death of three of Lowell’s children was
followed by the death of his wife in
1853. Henceforth his literary production
comprised mainly prose essays on topics
of literature, history, and politics. In
1855 his lectures on English poets
before the Lowell Institute led to his
appointment as Smith professor of modern
languages at Harvard University,
succeeding Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
After a yearlong visit to Italy and
Germany in 1855–56 to study, he held
this professorship for the next 20
years. In 1857 he married Frances
Dunlap, who had cared for his only
remaining child, Mabel; and in that year
he began his four years’ editorship of
the new Atlantic Monthly, to which he
attracted the major New England authors.
Lowell wrote a second series of Biglow
Papers for the Atlantic Monthly that
were devoted to Unionism and that were
collected in book form in 1867. After
the American Civil War he expressed his
devotion to the Union cause in four
memorial odes, the best of which is “Ode
Recited at the Harvard Commemoration”
(1865). His essays such as “E Pluribus
Unum” and “Washers of the Shroud” (1862)
also reflect his thought at this time.
Disillusioned by the political
corruption evident in President Ulysses
S. Grant’s two administrations
(1869–77), Lowell tried to provide his
fellow Americans with models of heroism
and idealism in literature. He was
editor with Charles Eliot Norton of
North American Review from 1864 to 1872,
and during this time appeared his series
of critical essays on such major
literary figures as Dante, Chaucer,
Edmund Spenser, John Milton, William
Shakespeare, John Dryden, William
Wordsworth, and John Keats. These and
other critical essays were collected in
the two series of Among My Books (1870,
1876). His later poetry includes The
Cathedral (1870), a long and ambitious
but only partly successful poem that
deals with the conflicting claims of
religion and modern science.
President Rutherford B. Hayes rewarded
Lowell’s support in the Republican
convention in 1876 by appointing him
minister to Spain (1877–80) and
ambassador to Great Britain (1880–85).
Lowell won great popularity in England’s
literary and political circles and
served as president of the Wordsworth
Society, succeeding Matthew Arnold.
After his second wife died in 1885,
Lowell retired from public life.
Lowell
was the archetypal New England man of
letters, remarkable for his cultivation
and charm, his deep learning, and his
varied literary talents. He wrote his
finest works before he was 30 years old,
however, and most of his subsequent
writings lack vitality. The totality of
his work, though brilliant in parts,
ultimately suffers from a lack of focus
and a failure to follow up on his
undoubted early successes.
