Rufus Wilmot Griswold (February 13, 1815 – August 27, 1857) was an American anthologist, editor, poet, and critic. Born in Vermont, Griswold left home when he was 15 years old. He worked as a journalist, editor, and critic in Philadelphia, New York City, and elsewhere. He built a strong literary reputation, in part due to his 1842 collection The Poets and Poetry of America. This anthology, the most comprehensive of its time, included what he deemed the best examples of American poetry. He produced revised versions and similar anthologies for the remainder of his life, although many of the poets he promoted have since faded into obscurity. Many writers hoped to have their work included in one of these editions, although they commented harshly on Griswold's abrasive character. Griswold was married three times: his first wife died young, his second marriage ended in a public and controversial divorce, and his third wife left him after the previous divorce was almost repealed.
Edgar Allan Poe, whose poetry had been included in Griswold's anthology, published a critical response that questioned which poets were included. This began a rivalry which grew when Griswold succeeded Poe as editor of Graham's Magazine at a salary higher than Poe's. Later, the two competed for the attention of poet Frances Sargent Osgood. They never reconciled their differences, and after Poe's mysterious death in 1849, Griswold wrote an unsympathetic obituary. Claiming to be Poe's chosen literary executor, he began a campaign to harm Poe's reputation that lasted until his own death eight years later.
Griswold considered himself an expert in American poetry and was an early proponent of its inclusion on the school curriculum. He also supported the introduction of copyright legislation, speaking to Congress on behalf of the publishing industry, but he was not above infringing the copyright of other people's work. A fellow editor remarked "even while haranguing the loudest, [he] is purloining the fastest".Moss, 80–81
Life and career
Early life Griswold was born to Rufus and Deborah (Wass) Griswold on February 13, 1815,Bayless, 5 in Vermont, near Rutland, and raised a strict CalvinistMeyers, 125 in the hamlet of Benson.Silverman, 212 He was the twelfth of fourteen children and his father was a farmer and shoemaker. In 1822, the family sold the Benson farm and moved to nearby Hubbardton.Bayless, 5–6 As a child, Griswold was complex, unpredictable, and reckless.Bayless, 7 He left home when he was 15, calling himself a "solitary soul, wandering through the world, a homeless, joyless outcast".Tomc, Sandra. "Poe and His Circle". Collected in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Kevin J. Hayes, ed. Cambridge University Press, 2002: 26. .
Griswold moved to Albany, New York, and lived with a 22-year-old flute-playing journalist named George C. Foster, a writer best known for his work New-York by Gas-Light. Griswold lived with Foster until he was 17, and the two may have had a romantic relationship. When Griswold moved away, Foster wrote to him begging him to return, signing his letter "come to me if you love me".Bayless, 10 Griswold attempted to enroll at the Rensselaer School in 1830, but was not allowed to take any classes after he was caught attempting to play a prank on a professor.Bayless, 8
Early career and first marriage After a brief spell as a printer's apprentice, Griswold moved to Syracuse, New York, where he started a newspaper with friends titled The Porcupine. This publication purposefully targeted locals for what was later remembered as merely malicious critique.Bayless, 12–13
He moved to New York City in 1836, and in March of that year, was introduced to 19-year-old Caroline Searles, whom he later married.Bayless, 15 He was employed as an editor for various publications in the New York area. In October, he considered running for office as a Whig but did not receive the party's support.Bayless, 17–18 In 1837, he was licensed as a Baptist clergyman, but he never had a permanent congregation.
Griswold married Caroline on August 12, 1837,Bayless, 20 and the couple had two daughters. Following the birth of their second daughter, Griswold left his family behind in New York and moved to Philadelphia.Silverman, 213 His departure on November 27, 1840Quinn, 350 was by all accounts abrupt, leaving his job with Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, and his library of several thousand volumes. He joined the staff of Philadelphia's Daily Standard and began to build his reputation as a literary critic, becoming known for his savagery and vindictiveness.
On November 6, 1842, Griswold visited his wife in New York after she had given birth to their third child, a son. Three days later, after returning to Philadelphia, he was informed that both she and the infant had died. Deeply shocked, Griswold traveled by train alongside her coffin, refusing to leave her side for 30 hours. When fellow passengers urged him to try to sleep, he answered by kissing her dead lips and embracing her, his two children crying next to him.Bayless, 64 He refused to leave the cemetery after her funeral, even after the other mourners had left, until forced to do so by a relative.Silverman, 217Bayless, 65 He wrote a long poem in blank verse dedicated to Caroline, titled "Five Days", which was printed in the New York Tribune on November 16, 1842.Bayless, 66 Griswold had difficulty believing she had died and often dreamed of their reunion. Forty days after her entombment, he entered her vault, cut off a lock of her hair, kissed her on the forehead and lips, and wept for several hours, staying by her side until a friend found him 30 hours later.
Anthologist and critic
In 1842, Griswold released his 476-page anthology of American poetry, The Poets and Poetry of America, which he dedicated to Washington Allston.Pattee, 279 Griswold's collection featured poems from over 80 authors,Sova, 197 including 17 by Lydia Sigourney, three by Edgar Allan Poe, and 45 by Charles Fenno Hoffman. Hoffman, a close friend, was allotted twice as much space as any other author.Pattee, 494 Griswold oversaw many anthologies, including Biographical Annual, which collected memoirs of "eminent persons recently deceased", Gems from American Female Poets, Prose Writers of America, and Female Poets of America.Quinn, 350–351
Between 1842 and 1845, while Griswold was collecting material for Prose Writers of America, he discovered the identity of Horace Binney Wallace, who had been writing in various literary magazines at the time (including Burton's Gentleman's Magazine) under the pen name William Landor. Wallace declined to be included in the anthology but the two became friends, exchanging many letters over the years.Hatvary, George E. Wallace, Horace Binney, 1817–1852: Criticism and Interpretation Ardent Media: 20. . Wallace eventually ghostwrote Griswold's Napoleon and the Marshals of the Empire (1847).Hatvary, George E. Wallace, Horace Binney, 1817–1852: Criticism and Interpretation. Ardent Media, 1977: 11. .
Prose Writers of America, published in 1847, was prepared specifically to compete with a similar anthology by Cornelius Mathews and Evert Augustus Duyckinck.Miller, 169 The prose collection earned Griswold a rivalry with the two men, which Griswold expected. As it was being published, Griswold wrote to Boston publisher James T. Fields that "Young America will be rabid".Widmer, Edward L. Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999: 121. . In preparing his anthologies, Griswold wrote to the living authors whose work he was including to ask their suggestions on which poems to include as well as to gather information for a biographical sketch.Pattee, 391
In 1843, Griswold founded The Opal, an annual gift book that collected essays, stories, and poetry. Nathaniel Parker Willis edited its first edition, released in the fall of 1844.Bayless, 83 For a time, Griswold was editor of the Saturday Evening PostOberholtzer, Ellis Paxson. The Literary History of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1906: 298. . and published a collection of poetry, titled The Cypress Wreath (1844). His poems, with titles such as "The Happy Hour of Death", "On the Death of a Young Girl", and "The Slumber of Death", emphasized mortality and mourning.Kennedy, J. Gerald. Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing. Yale University Press, 1987: 66–67. . Another collection of his poetry, Christian Ballads and Other Poems, was published in 1844, and his nonfiction book, The Republican Court or, American Society in the Days of Washington, was published in 1854.Bayless, 234 The book is meant to cover events during the presidency of George Washington, though it mixes historical fact with apocryphal legend until one is indistinguishable from the other.Bryan, William Alfred. George Washington in American Literature 1775–1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952: 103. During this period, Griswold occasionally offered his services at the pulpit delivering sermonsBayless, 93 and he may have received an honorary doctorate from Shurtleff College, a Baptist institution in Illinois, leading to his nickname the "Reverend Dr. Griswold".No records from the college authenticating this claim exist. Bayless, 274
Second marriage On August 20, 1845, Griswold married Charlotte Myers, a Jewish woman;Bayless, 107 she was 42 and he was 33.Silverman, 342 Griswold had been pressured into the marriage by the woman's aunts despite his concern about their difference in religious beliefs. This difference was strong enough that one of Griswold's friends referred to his wife only as "the little Jewess".Silverman, 354 On their wedding night, he discovered that she was, according to Griswold biographer Joy Bayless, "through some physical misfortune, incapable of being a wife"Bayless, 108 or, as Poe biographer Kenneth Silverman explains, incapable of having sex. Griswold considered the marriage void and no more valid "than there would have been had the ceremony taken place between parties of the same sex, or where the sex of one was doubtful or ambiguous". Still, the couple moved together to Charleston, South Carolina, Charlotte's home town, and lived under the same roof, albeit sleeping in separate rooms. Neither of the two was happy with the situation, and at the end of April 1846, she had a lawyer write a contract "to separate, altogether and forever, ... which would in effect be a divorce".Bayless, 111 The contract forbade Griswold from remarrying and paid him $1,000 (~$ in ) for expenses in exchange for his daughter Caroline staying with the Myers family.Bayless, 111–112 After this separation, Griswold immediately moved back to Philadelphia.
Move to New York City