JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL BIOGRAPHY

LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL (1819-1891). —Poet and essayist, born at Camb., Massachusetts, s. of a Unitarian minister, was ed. at Harvard. He began active life as a lawyer, but soon abandoned business, and devoted himself mainly to literature. In 1841 he pub. a vol. of poems, A Year's Life , and in 1843 a second book of verses appeared. He also wrote at this time political articles in the Atlantic and North American Review . In 1848 he pub. a third vol. of Poems , A Fable for Critics , The Biglow Papers , and The Vision of Sir Launfal ; and he was in 1855 appointed Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard in succession to Longfellow. Among my Books appeared in 2 series, in 1870 and 1876. His later poems included various Odes in celebration of national events, some of which were coll. in Under the Willows , The Cathedral , and Heartsease and Rue . In 1877 he was appointed United States minister to Spain, and he held a similar appointment in England 1880-85. He d. at Elmwood, the house in which he was born L. was a man of singularly varied gifts, wit, humour, scholarship, and considerable poetic power, and he is the greatest critic America has yet produced. He was a strong advocate of the abolition of slavery.