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Nathaniel Parker Willis

Nathaniel Parker Willis (January 20, 1806 – January 20, 1867), also known as N. P. Willis,[1] was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis and his sister Sara wrote under the name Fanny Fern. Harriet Jacobs wrote her autobiography while being employed as his children's nurse.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
Portrait of Willis by Mathew Brady studios, circa mid-1850s
Born(1806-01-20)January 20, 1806
Portland, Maine, U.S.
DiedJanuary 20, 1867(1867-01-20) (aged 61)
Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, U.S.
Resting placeMount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts
OccupationEditor
Literary critic
Poet
Signature

Born in Portland, Maine, Willis came from a family of publishers. His grandfather Nathaniel Willis owned newspapers in Massachusetts and Virginia, and his father Nathaniel Willis was the founder of Youth's Companion, the first newspaper specifically for children. Willis developed an interest in literature while attending Yale College and began publishing poetry. After graduation, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the New York Mirror. He eventually moved to New York and began to build his literary reputation. Working with multiple publications, he was earning about $100 per article and between $5,000[2] and $10,000 per year.[3] In 1846, he started his own publication, the Home Journal, which was eventually renamed Town & Country. Shortly after, Willis moved to a home on the Hudson River where he lived a semi-retired life until his death in 1867.

Willis embedded his own personality into his writing and addressed his readers personally, specifically in his travel writings, so that his reputation was built in part because of his character. Critics, including his sister in her novel Ruth Hall, occasionally described him as being effeminate and Europeanized. Willis also published several poems, tales, and a play. Despite his intense popularity for a time, at his death Willis was nearly forgotten.

Life and career

 
A young Nathaniel Parker Willis

Early life and family

Nathaniel Parker Willis was born on January 20, 1806, in Portland, Maine.[4] His father Nathaniel Willis was a newspaper proprietor there and his grandfather owned newspapers in Boston, Massachusetts and western Virginia.[5] His mother was Hannah Willis (née Parker) from Holliston, Massachusetts and it was her husband's offer to edit the Eastern Argus in Maine that caused their move to Portland.[6] Willis's younger sister was Sara Willis Parton, who would later become a writer under the pseudonym Fanny Fern. His brother, Richard Storrs Willis, became a musician and music journalist known for writing the melody for "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear".[7] His other siblings were Lucy Douglas (born 1804), Louisa Harris (1807), Julia Dean (1809), Mary Perry (1813), Edward Payson (1816), and Ellen Holmes (1821).[8]

In 1816, the family moved to Boston, where Willis's father established the Boston Recorder and, nine years later, the Youth's Companion,[9] the world's first newspaper for children.[10] The elder Willis's emphasis on religious themes earned him the nickname "Deacon" Willis.[1] After attending a Boston grammar school and Phillips Academy at Andover, Nathaniel Parker Willis entered Yale College in October 1823[11] where he roomed with Horace Bushnell.[12] Willis credited Bushnell with teaching him the proper technique for sharpening a razor by "drawing it from heel to point both ways ... the two cross frictions correct each other".[13] At Yale, he further developed an interest in literature, often neglecting his other studies.[9] He graduated in 1827[14] and spent time touring parts of the United States and Canada. In Montreal, he met Chester Harding, with whom he would become a lifelong friend. Years later, Harding referred to Willis during this period as "the 'lion' of the town".[15] Willis began publishing poetry in his father's Boston Periodical, often using one of two literary personalities under the pen names "Roy" (for religious subjects) and "Cassius" (for more secular topics).[11] The same year, Willis published a volume of poetical Sketches.[4]

Literary career

In the latter part of the 1820s, Willis began contributing more frequently to magazines and periodicals. In 1829, he served as editor for the gift book The Token, making him the only person to be editor in the book's 15-year history besides its founder, Samuel Griswold Goodrich.[16] That year, Willis founded the American Monthly Magazine,[11] which began publishing in April 1829 until it was discontinued in August 1831.[4] He blamed its failure on the "tight purses of Boston culture"[14] and moved to Europe to serve as foreign editor and correspondent of the New York Mirror.[4] In 1832, while in Florence, Italy, he met Horatio Greenough, who sculpted a bust of the writer.[17] Between 1832 and 1836, Willis contributed a series of letters for the Mirror, about half of which were later collected as Pencillings by the Way, printed in London in 1835.[18] The romantic descriptions of scenes and modes of life in Europe sold well despite the then high price tag of $7 a copy. The work became popular and boosted Willis's literary reputation enough that an American edition was soon issued.[19]

 
American Scenery by N. P. Willis with illustration by William Henry Bartlett, 1840.

Despite this popularity, he was censured by some critics for indiscretion in reporting private conversations. At one point he fought a bloodless duel with Captain Frederick Marryat, then editor of the Metropolitan Magazine, after Willis sent a private letter of Marryat's to George Pope Morris, who had it printed.[20] Still, in 1835 Willis was popular enough to introduce Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to important literary figures in England, including Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron.[21]

While abroad, Willis wrote to a friend, "I should like to marry in England".[22] He soon married Mary Stace, daughter of General William Stace of Woolwich, on October 1, 1835, after a month-long engagement.[23] The couple took a two-week honeymoon in Paris.[22] The couple moved to London where, in 1836, Willis met Charles Dickens, who was working for the Morning Chronicle at the time.[24]

In 1837, Willis and his wife returned to the United States[25] and settled at a small estate on Owego Creek in New York, just above its junction with the Susquehanna River.[26] He named the home Glenmary and the 200-acre (0.81 km2) rural setting inspired him to write Letters from under a Bridge.[27] On October 20, 1838, Willis began a series of articles called "A New Series of Letters from London", one of which suggested an illicit relationship between writer Letitia Elizabeth Landon and editor William Jordan. The article caused some scandal, for which Willis's publisher had to apologize.[28]

On June 20, 1839, Willis's play Tortesa, the Usurer premiered in Philadelphia at the Walnut Street Theatre.[29] Edgar Allan Poe called it "by far the best play from the pen of an American author".[30] That year, he was also editor of the short-lived periodical The Corsair, for which he enlisted William Makepeace Thackeray to write short sketches of France.[31] Another major work, Two Ways of Dying for a Husband, was published in England during a short visit there in 1839–1840. Shortly after returning to the United States, his personal life was touched with grief when his first child was stillborn on December 4, 1840. He and Stace had a second daughter, Imogen, who was born June 20, 1842.[32]

Later that year, Willis attended a ball in honor of Charles Dickens in New York. After dancing with Dickens's wife, Willis and Dickens went out for "rum toddy and broiled oysters".[24] By this time, his fame had grown enough that he was often invited to lecture and recite poetry, including his presentation to the Linonian Society at Yale on August 17, 1841.[33] Willis was invited to submit a column to the each weekly issue of Brother Jonathan, a publication from New York with 20,000 subscribers, which he did until September 1841.[34] By 1842, Willis was earning the unusually high salary of $4,800 a year. As a later journalist remarked, this made Willis "the first magazine writer who was tolerably well paid".[35]

Evening Mirror

 
Willis became the highest-paid magazine writer in America.

Returning to New York City, Willis reorganized, along with George Pope Morris, the weekly New York Mirror as the daily Evening Mirror[25] in 1844 with a weekly supplement called the Weekly Mirror, in part due to the rising cost of postage.[36] By this time, Willis was a popular writer (a joke was that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was Germany's version of N. P. Willis) and one of the first commercially successful magazine writers in America.[37] In the fall of that year, he also became the first editor of the annual gift book The Opal founded by Rufus Wilmot Griswold.[38] During this time, he became the highest-paid magazine writer in America, earning about $100 per article and $5,000 per year,[37] a number which would soon double. Even the popular poet Longfellow admitted his jealousy of Willis's salary.[3]

As a critic, Willis did not believe in including discussions of personalities of writers when reviewing their works. He also believed that, though publications should discuss political topics, they should not express party opinions or choose sides.[39] The Mirror flourished at a time when many publications were discontinuing. Its success was due to the shrewd management of Willis and Morris and the two demonstrated that the American public could support literary endeavors.[40] Willis was becoming an expert in American literature and so, in 1845, Willis and Morris issued an anthology, The Prose and Poetry of America.[41]

While Willis was editor of the Evening Mirror, its issue for January 29, 1845, included the first printing of Poe's poem "The Raven" with his name attached. In his introduction, Willis called it "unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent, sustaining of imaginative lift ... It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it".[42] Willis and Poe were close friends, and Willis helped Poe financially during his wife Virginia's illness and while Poe was suing Thomas Dunn English for libel.[43] Willis often tried to persuade Poe to be less destructive in his criticism and concentrate on his poetry.[44] Even so, Willis published many pieces of what would later be referred to as "The Longfellow War", a literary battle between Poe and the supporters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whom Poe called overrated and guilty of plagiarism.[45] Willis also introduced Poe to Fanny Osgood; the two would later carry out a very public literary flirtation.[46]

Willis's wife Mary Stace died in childbirth on March 25, 1845. Their daughter, Blanche, died as well and Willis wrote in his notebook that she was "an angel without fault or foible".[47] He took his surviving daughter Imogen to England to visit her mother's family.[48] In October 1846, he married Cornelia Grinnell, a wealthy Quaker from New Bedford[49] and the adopted daughter of a local Congressman.[50] She was two decades younger than Willis at the time and vocally disliked slavery, unlike her new husband.[51]

Home Journal

In 1846, Willis and Morris left the Evening Mirror and attempted to edit a new weekly, the National Press, which was renamed the Home Journal after eight months.[52] Their prospectus for the publication, published November 21, 1846, announced their intentions to create a magazine "to circle around the family table".[53] Willis intended the magazine for the middle and lower classes and included the message of upward social mobility, using himself as an example, often describing in detail his personal possessions.[54] When discussing his own social climbing, however, he emphasized his frustrations rather than his successes, endearing him to his audience.[55] He edited the Home Journal until his death in 1867. It was renamed Town & Country in 1901, and it is still published under that title as of 2020. During Willis's time at the journal, he especially promoted the works of women poets, including Frances Sargent Osgood, Anne Lynch Botta, Grace Greenwood, and Julia Ward Howe.[56] Willis and his editors favorably reviewed many works now considered important today, including Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance.[57]

Idlewild

 
Willis purchased a home in 1846 which he named Idlewild. The home would later inspire the title of an 1855 book.

In 1846, Willis settled near the banks of Canterbury Creek near the Hudson River in New York and named his new home Idlewild.[58][59] When Willis first visited the property, the owners said it had little value and that it was "an idle wild of which nothing could ever be made".[60] He built a fourteen-room "cottage", as he called it, at the edge of a plateau by Moodna Creek next to a sudden 200-foot (61 m) drop into a gorge. Willis worked closely with the architect, Calvert Vaux, to carefully plan each gable and piazza to fully take advantage of the dramatic view of the river and mountains.[61]

Because of failing health Willis spent the remainder of his life chiefly in retirement at Idlewild. His wife Cornelia was also recovering from a difficult illness after the birth of their first child together,[49] a son named Grinnell, who was born April 28, 1848. They had four other children: Lilian (born April 27, 1850),[62] Edith (born September 28, 1853), Bailey (born May 31, 1857), and a daughter who died only a few minutes after her birth on October 31, 1860.[63]

In 1850, Cornelia Willis re-hired Harriet Jacobs, a fugitive slave from North Carolina, who had already before been working for the family as Imogen's nanny.[64] When her legal owners came to New York in 1852 to force her back into slavery, Cornelia Willis bought her freedom for $300.[65] While working for the Willis family at Idlewild, Jacobs wrote her autobiography, published in 1861. Her biographer, J.F.Yellin, comments on the irony of the situation: "Idlewild had been conceived as a famous writer's retreat, but its owner never imagined that it was his children's nurse who would create an American classic there".[66] Jacobs stayed with the Willis family until after the publication of her book.[67] Cornelia Willis is called a "true ... friend"[68] in the autobiography, and the friendship lasted into the next generation, ending only with the death of Louisa Jacobs at the home of Edith Willis Grinnell in 1917.[69]

During these last years at Idlewild, Willis continued contributing a weekly letter to the Home Journal.[63] In 1850 he assisted Rufus Wilmot Griswold in preparing an anthology of the works of Poe, who had died mysteriously the year before. Griswold also wrote the first biography of Poe in which he purposely set out to ruin the dead author's reputation. Willis was one of the most vocal of Poe's defenders, writing at one point: "The indictment (for it deserves no other name) is not true. It is full of cruel misrepresentations. It deepens the shadows unto unnatural darkness, and shuts out the rays of sunshines that ought to relieve them".[70]

Willis was involved in the 1850 divorce suit between the actor Edwin Forrest and his wife Catherine Norton Sinclair Forrest.[57] In January 1849, Forrest had found a love letter to his wife from fellow actor George W. Jamieson.[71] As a result, he and Catherine separated in April 1849. He moved to Philadelphia and filed for divorce in February 1850 though the Pennsylvania legislature denied his application.[72] Catharine went to live with the family of Parke Godwin and the separation became a public affair, with newspapers throughout New York reporting on supposed infidelities and other gossip.[73]

Willis defended Catharine, who maintained her innocence, in the Home Journal and suggested that Forrest was merely jealous of her intellectual superiority.[74] On June 17, 1850, shortly after Forrest had filed for divorce in the New York Supreme Court,[75] Forrest beat Willis with a gutta-percha whip in New York's Washington Square, shouting "this man is the seducer of my wife".[76] Willis, who was recovering from a rheumatic fever at the time, was unable to fight back.[77] His wife soon received an anonymous letter with an accusation that Willis was in an adulterous relationship with Catherine Forrest.[78] Willis later sued Forrest for assault and, by March 1852, was awarded $2,500 plus court costs.[77] Throughout the Forrest divorce case, which lasted six weeks, several witnesses made additional claims that Catherine Forrest and Nathaniel Parker Willis were having an affair, including a waiter who claimed he had seen the couple "lying on each other".[78] As the press reported, "thousands and thousands of the anxious public" awaited the court's verdict; ultimately, the court sided with Catherine Forrest and Willis's name was cleared.[79]

Ruth Hall

Willis arbitrarily refused to print the work of his sister Sara Willis ("Fanny Fern") after 1854,[56] though she previously had contributed anonymous book reviews to the Home Journal.[7] She had recently been widowed, became destitute, and was publicly denounced by her abusive second husband.[80] Criticizing what he perceived as her restlessness, Willis once made her the subject of his poem "To My Wild Sis".[81] As Fanny Fern, she had published Fern Leaves, which sold over 100,000 copies the year before.[82] Willis, however, did not encourage his sister's writings. "You overstrain the pathetic, and your humor runs into dreadful vulgarity sometimes ... I am sorry that any editor knows that a sister of mine wrote some of these which you sent me", he wrote.[83] In 1854 she published Ruth Hall, a Domestic Tale of the Present Time,[84] a barely concealed semi-autobiographical account of her own difficulties in the literary world. Nathaniel Willis was represented as "Hyacinth Ellet", an effeminate, self-serving editor who schemes to ruin his sister's prospects as a writer.[85] Willis did not publicly protest but in private he asserted that, despite his fictitious equivalent, he had done his best to support his sister during her difficult times, especially after the death of her first husband.[86]

Among his later works, following in his traditional sketches about his life and people he has met, were Hurry-Graphs (1851), Out-Doors at Idlewild (1854), and Ragbag (1855). Willis had complained that his magazine writing prevented him from writing a longer work. He finally had the time in 1856, and he wrote his only novel, Paul Fane, which was published a year later.[87] The character Bosh Blivins, who served as comic relief in the novel, may have been based on painter Chester Harding.[88] His final work was The Convalescent (1859), which included a chapter on his time spent with Washington Irving at Sunnyside.[89]

Final years and death

 
Grave of Nathaniel Parker Willis

In July 1860, Willis took his last major trip. Along with his wife, he stopped in Chicago and Yellow Springs, Ohio, as far west as Madison, Wisconsin, and also took a steamboat down the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri, and returned through Cincinnati, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[90] In 1861, Willis allowed the Home Journal to break its pledge to avoid taking sides in political discussions when the Confederate States of America was established, calling the move a purposeful act to bring on war.[91] On May 28, 1861, Willis was part of a committee of literary figures—including William Cullen Bryant, Charles Anderson Dana, and Horace Greeley—to invite Edward Everett to speak in New York on behalf of maintaining the Union.[92] The Home Journal lost many subscribers during the American Civil War, Morris died in 1864, and the Willis family had to take in boarders and for a time turned Idlewild into a girls' school for income.[93]

Willis was very sick in these final years: he suffered from violent epileptic seizures and, early in November 1866, fainted in the streets.[94] Willis died on his 61st birthday, January 20, 1867, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[95] Four days later, the day of his funeral, all bookstores in the city were closed as a token of respect.[95] His pallbearers included Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Samuel Gridley Howe, and James T. Fields.[96]

Reputation

 
Daguerreotype of Willis, circa 1857

Throughout his literary career, Willis was well liked and known for his good nature amongst friends. Well traveled and clever, he had a striking appearance at six feet tall and was typically dressed elegantly. Many, however, remarked that Willis was effeminate, Europeanized, and guilty of "Miss Nancyism". One editor called him "an impersonal passive verb—a pronoun of the feminine gender".[37] A contemporary caricature depicted him wearing a fashionable beaver hat and tightly closed coat and carrying a cane, reflecting Willis's wide reputation as a "dandy".[97] Willis put considerable effort into his appearance and his fashion sense, presenting himself as a member of an upcoming American aristocracy.[98] As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. once said, Willis was "something between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an anticipation of Oscar Wilde".[99] Publisher Charles Frederick Briggs once wrote that "Willis was too Willisy".[100] He described his writings as the "novelty and gossip of the hour" and was not necessarily concerned about facts but with the "material of conversation and speculation, which may be mere rumor, may be the truth".[101] Willis's behavior in social groups annoyed fellow poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. "He is too artificial", Longfellow wrote to his friend George Washington Greene. "And his poetry has now lost one of its greatest charms for me—its sincerity".[102] E. Burke Fisher, a journalist in Pittsburgh, wrote that "Willis is a kind of national pet and we must regard his faults as we do those of a spoiled stripling, in the hope that he will amend".[103]

Willis built up his reputation in the public at a time when readers were interested in the personal lives of writers.[104] In his writings, he described the "high life" of the "Upper Ten Thousand", a phrase he coined.[99] His travel writings in particular were popular for this reason[105] as Willis was actually living the life he was describing and recommending to readers.[106] Even so, he manufactured a humble and modest persona, questioned his own literary merit, and purposely used titles, such as Pencillings by the Way and Dashes at Life With Free Pencil, which downplayed their own quality.[55] His informally toned editorials, which covered a variety of topics, were also very successful.[105] Using whimsicality and humor, he was purposely informal to allow his personality to show in his writing.[107] He addressed his readers personally, as if having a private conversation with them. As he once wrote: "We would have you ... indulge us in our innocent egotism as if it were all whispered in your private ear and over our iced Margaux".[108] When women poets were becoming popular in the 1850s, he emulated their style and focused on sentimental and moral subjects.[109]

In the publishing world, Willis was known as a shrewd magazinist and an innovator who focused on appealing to readers' special interests while still recognizing new talent.[110] In fact, Willis became the standard by which other magazinists were judged. According to writer George William Curtis, "His gayety [sic] and his graceful fluency made him the first of our proper 'magazinists'".[111] For a time, it was said that Willis was the "most-talked-about author" in the United States.[112] Poe questioned Willis's fame, however. "Willis is no genius–a graceful trifler–no more", he wrote in a letter to James Russell Lowell. "In me, at least, he never excites an emotion."[113] Minor Southern writer Joseph Beckham Cobb wrote: "No sane person, we are persuaded, can read his poetry".[114] Future senator Charles Sumner reported: "I find Willis is much laughed at for his sketches".[115] Even so, most contemporaries recognized how prolific he was as a writer and how much time he put into all of his writings. James Parton said of him:

Of all the literary men whom I have ever known, N. P. Willis was the one who took the most pains with his work. It was no very uncommon thing for him to toil over a sentence for an hour; and I knew him one evening to write and rewrite a sentence for two hours before he had got it to his mind.[116]

By 1850 and with the publication of Hurry-Graphs, Willis was becoming a forgotten celebrity. In August 1853, future President James A. Garfield discussed Willis's declining popularity in his diary: "Willis is said to be a licentious man, although an unrivaled poet. How strange that such men should go to ruin, when they might soar perpetually in the heaven of heavens".[117] After Willis's death, obituaries reported that he had outlived his fame.[118] One remarked, "the man who withdraws from the whirling currents of active life is speedily forgotten".[93] This obituary also stated that Americans "will ever remember and cherish Nathaniel P. Willis as one worthy to stand with Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving".[119] In 1946, the centennial issue of Town & Country reported that Willis "led a generation of Americans through a gate where weeds gave way to horticulture".[99] More modern scholars have dismissed Willis's work as "sentimental prattle" or refer to him only as an obstacle in the progress of his sister as well as Harriet Jacobs.[120] As biographer Thomas N. Baker wrote, Willis is today only referred to as a footnote in relation to other authors.[112]

Selected list of works

Prose

  • Sketches (1827)[121]
  • Pencillings by the Way (1835)[122]
  • Inklings of Adventure (1836)[122]
  • À l'Abri; or, The Tent Pitched (1839)[122]
  • Loiterings of Travel (1840)[122]
  • The Romance of Travel (1840)
  • American Scenery (2 volumes 1840)
  • Canadian Scenery (2 volumes 1842)
  • Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil (1845)[123]
  • Rural Letters and Other Records of Thoughts at Leisure (1849)[123]
  • People I Have Met (1850)[123]
  • Life Here and There (1850)[123]
  • Hurry-Graphs (1851)[123]
  • Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean (1853)[123]
  • Fun-Jottings; or, Laughs I Have Taken a Pen to (1853)[123]
  • Health Trip to the Tropics (1854)[123]
  • Ephemera (1854)[123]
  • Famous Persons and Places (1854)[123]
  • Out-Doors at Idlewild; or, The Shaping of a Home on the Banks of the Hudson (1855)[123]
  • The Rag Bag. A Collection of Ephemera (1855)[123]
  • Paul Fane; or, Parts of a Life Else Untold. A Novel (1857)[123]
  • The Convalescent (1859)[124]

Plays

  • Bianca Visconti; or, The Heart Overtasked. A Tragedy in Five Acts (1839)[122]
  • Tortesa; or, The Userer Matched (1839)[122]

Poetry

  • Fugitive Poetry (1829)[121]
  • Melanie and Other Poems (1831)[125]
  • The Sacred Poems of N. P. Willis (1843)[125]
  • Poems of Passion (1843)[125]
  • Lady Jane and Humorous Poems (1844)[123]
  • The Poems, Sacred, Passionate, and Humorous (1868)[125]

References

  1. ^ a b Baker, 3
  2. ^ Beers, 262
  3. ^ a b Baker, 88
  4. ^ a b c d Lapidos, Julet. "Old New Haven", The Advocate, March 17, 2005.
  5. ^ Auser, 19
  6. ^ Baker, 16
  7. ^ a b Baker, 160
  8. ^ Warren, Joyce W. Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992: 5. ISBN 0-8135-1763-X
  9. ^ a b Auser, 20
  10. ^ Phillips, 909
  11. ^ a b c Auser, 21
  12. ^ Pattee, 500
  13. ^ Lewis, R. W. B. The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1955: 68.
  14. ^ a b Phillips, 910
  15. ^ Callow, 83
  16. ^ Vanderbilt, Kermit. American Literature and the Academy: The Roots, Growth, and Maturity of a Profession. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986: 55. ISBN 0-8122-1291-6
  17. ^ Callow, 86
  18. ^ Pattee, 515
  19. ^ Baker, 84
  20. ^ Auser, 46
  21. ^ Calhoun, Charles C. Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8070-7026-2. p. 98
  22. ^ a b Baker, 76
  23. ^ Beers, 170–171
  24. ^ a b Beers, 264
  25. ^ a b Phillips, 911
  26. ^ Baker, 86
  27. ^ Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 163. ISBN 0-19-503186-5
  28. ^ Auser, 47–48
  29. ^ Quinn, 284
  30. ^ Meyers, 152
  31. ^ Callow, 111
  32. ^ Beers, 263–264
  33. ^ Beers, 271
  34. ^ Beers, 259–260
  35. ^ Beers, 260–261
  36. ^ Quinn, 434
  37. ^ a b c Silverman, 223
  38. ^ Bayless, 83
  39. ^ Auser, 23
  40. ^ Auser, 51–52
  41. ^ Auser, 118
  42. ^ Silverman, 237
  43. ^ Meyers, 202
  44. ^ Meyers, 184
  45. ^ Silverman, 234–235
  46. ^ Meyers, 174
  47. ^ Beers, 276
  48. ^ Yellin, 83
  49. ^ a b Baker, 122
  50. ^ Beers, 287
  51. ^ Yellin, 109
  52. ^ Auser, 125
  53. ^ Auser, 125–126
  54. ^ Tomc, 785–786
  55. ^ a b Tomc, 794
  56. ^ a b Auser, 130
  57. ^ a b Auser, 132
  58. ^ Auser, 142
  59. ^ The first floor of the former three-story brick home is still standing in an area known as Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York at 20 Idlewild Park Drive; it is a private home. See: Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 106. ISBN 0-19-503186-5
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  64. ^ Yellin, 70, 83
  65. ^ Yellin, 114-116
  66. ^ Yellin, 126
  67. ^ Yellin, 150
  68. ^ Jacobs, Harriet A., Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harvard University Press, 2000: 190. Jacobs changes all names in her book, Willis becomes "Bruce".
  69. ^ Yellin, 70, 265
  70. ^ Quinn, 666–667
  71. ^ Baker, 116
  72. ^ Beers, 309
  73. ^ Baker, 117
  74. ^ Beers, 311
  75. ^ Beers, 312
  76. ^ Baker, 115
  77. ^ a b Beers, 313
  78. ^ a b Yellin, 112
  79. ^ Yellin, 113
  80. ^ Yellin, 132
  81. ^ Baker, 161
  82. ^ Baker, 164
  83. ^ Baker, 163
  84. ^ Auser, 334
  85. ^ Baker, 170
  86. ^ Auser, 336–337
  87. ^ Auser, 101
  88. ^ Callow, 84
  89. ^ Beers, 332–333
  90. ^ Beers, 340–341
  91. ^ Auser, 128
  92. ^ Auser, 128–129
  93. ^ a b Baker, 188
  94. ^ Yellin, 201
  95. ^ a b Beers, 350
  96. ^ Baker, 187
  97. ^ Reilly, John E. "Poe in Pillory: An Early Version of a Satire by A. J. H. Duganne", Poe Studies, vol. VI, no. 1, June 1973: 10. Accessed June 5, 2008
  98. ^ Baker, 97
  99. ^ a b c Tomc, 783
  100. ^ Thomas, Dwight and David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809–1849. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1987: 514. ISBN 0-7838-1401-1
  101. ^ Baker, 87
  102. ^ Thompson, Lawrance. Young Longfellow (1807–1843). New York: The Macmillan Company,1938: 215.
  103. ^ Thomas, Dwight and David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809–1849. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1987: 266. ISBN 0-7838-1401-1
  104. ^ Baker, 6
  105. ^ a b Auser, 54
  106. ^ Tomc, 786
  107. ^ Callow, 113
  108. ^ Tomc, 784
  109. ^ Watts, Emily Stipes. The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1978: 73–74. ISBN 0-292-76450-2
  110. ^ Auser, 146
  111. ^ Pattee, 499
  112. ^ a b Baker, 4
  113. ^ Quinn, 389
  114. ^ Hubbell, Jay B. The South in American Literature: 1607–1900. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 638.
  115. ^ Baker, 100
  116. ^ Tomc, 795–796
  117. ^ Baker, 158
  118. ^ Beers, 351
  119. ^ "Obituary. Nathaniel Parker Willis", The New York Times. January 22, 1867. Accessed May 11, 2008
  120. ^ Tomc, 799–800
  121. ^ a b Beers, 353
  122. ^ a b c d e f Beers, 354
  123. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Beers, 355
  124. ^ Beers, 356
  125. ^ a b c d Auser, 165

Sources

  • Auser, Cortland P. Nathaniel P. Willis. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1969.
  • Baker, Thomas N. Sentiment and Celebrity: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame. New York, Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-19-512073-6
  • Bayless, Joy. Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe's Literary Executor. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1943.
  • Beers, Henry A. Nathaniel Parker Willis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913.
  • Callow, James T. Kindred Spirits: Knickerbocker Writers and American Artists, 1807–1855. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1967.
  • Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8154-1038-7
  • Pattee, Fred Lewis. The First Century of American Literature: 1770–1870. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1966.
  • Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. Volume II. Chicago: The John C. Winston Co., 1926.
  • Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1941. ISBN 0-8018-5730-9
  • Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. ISBN 0-06-092331-8
  • Tomc, Sandra. "An Idle Industry: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Workings of Literary Leisure", American Quarterly. Vol. 49, Issue 4, December 1997: 780–805.
  • Yellin, Jean Fagan. Harriet Jacobs: A Life. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basic Civitas Books, 2004. ISBN 0-465-09288-8

External links

  • Works by Nathaniel Parker Willis at Project Gutenberg
  • Works by Nathaniel Parker Willis at Faded Page (Canada)
  • Works by or about Nathaniel Parker Willis at Internet Archive
  • Works by Nathaniel Parker Willis at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
  • "Death of Edgar Poe" by Nathaniel Parker Willis. From the Home Journal, October 20, 1849. Courtesy of The Edgar Allan Poe Society Online
  • Summer cruise in the Mediterranean on board an American frigate by Nathaniel Parker Willis
  • Nathaniel Parker Willis vs. Edwin Forrest from The New York Times, May 2, 1852
  • from Home Journal , February 21, 1852
  • Nathaniel Parker Willis at Library of Congress Authorities, with 119 catalog records
  • Finding aid to Nathaniel Parker Willis letters at Columbia University, Rare Book & Manuscript Library

nathaniel, parker, willis, january, 1806, january, 1867, also, known, willis, american, author, poet, editor, worked, with, several, notable, american, writers, including, edgar, allan, henry, wadsworth, longfellow, became, highest, paid, magazine, writer, bro. Nathaniel Parker Willis January 20 1806 January 20 1867 also known as N P Willis 1 was an American author poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow He became the highest paid magazine writer of his day His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis and his sister Sara wrote under the name Fanny Fern Harriet Jacobs wrote her autobiography while being employed as his children s nurse Nathaniel Parker WillisPortrait of Willis by Mathew Brady studios circa mid 1850sBorn 1806 01 20 January 20 1806Portland Maine U S DiedJanuary 20 1867 1867 01 20 aged 61 Cornwall on Hudson New York U S Resting placeMount Auburn Cemetery Cambridge MassachusettsOccupationEditorLiterary criticPoetSignatureBorn in Portland Maine Willis came from a family of publishers His grandfather Nathaniel Willis owned newspapers in Massachusetts and Virginia and his father Nathaniel Willis was the founder of Youth s Companion the first newspaper specifically for children Willis developed an interest in literature while attending Yale College and began publishing poetry After graduation he worked as an overseas correspondent for the New York Mirror He eventually moved to New York and began to build his literary reputation Working with multiple publications he was earning about 100 per article and between 5 000 2 and 10 000 per year 3 In 1846 he started his own publication the Home Journal which was eventually renamed Town amp Country Shortly after Willis moved to a home on the Hudson River where he lived a semi retired life until his death in 1867 Willis embedded his own personality into his writing and addressed his readers personally specifically in his travel writings so that his reputation was built in part because of his character Critics including his sister in her novel Ruth Hall occasionally described him as being effeminate and Europeanized Willis also published several poems tales and a play Despite his intense popularity for a time at his death Willis was nearly forgotten Contents 1 Life and career 1 1 Early life and family 1 2 Literary career 1 3 Evening Mirror 1 4 Home Journal 1 5 Idlewild 1 6 Ruth Hall 1 7 Final years and death 2 Reputation 3 Selected list of works 4 References 4 1 Sources 5 External linksLife and career Edit A young Nathaniel Parker Willis Early life and family Edit Nathaniel Parker Willis was born on January 20 1806 in Portland Maine 4 His father Nathaniel Willis was a newspaper proprietor there and his grandfather owned newspapers in Boston Massachusetts and western Virginia 5 His mother was Hannah Willis nee Parker from Holliston Massachusetts and it was her husband s offer to edit the Eastern Argus in Maine that caused their move to Portland 6 Willis s younger sister was Sara Willis Parton who would later become a writer under the pseudonym Fanny Fern His brother Richard Storrs Willis became a musician and music journalist known for writing the melody for It Came Upon the Midnight Clear 7 His other siblings were Lucy Douglas born 1804 Louisa Harris 1807 Julia Dean 1809 Mary Perry 1813 Edward Payson 1816 and Ellen Holmes 1821 8 In 1816 the family moved to Boston where Willis s father established the Boston Recorder and nine years later the Youth s Companion 9 the world s first newspaper for children 10 The elder Willis s emphasis on religious themes earned him the nickname Deacon Willis 1 After attending a Boston grammar school and Phillips Academy at Andover Nathaniel Parker Willis entered Yale College in October 1823 11 where he roomed with Horace Bushnell 12 Willis credited Bushnell with teaching him the proper technique for sharpening a razor by drawing it from heel to point both ways the two cross frictions correct each other 13 At Yale he further developed an interest in literature often neglecting his other studies 9 He graduated in 1827 14 and spent time touring parts of the United States and Canada In Montreal he met Chester Harding with whom he would become a lifelong friend Years later Harding referred to Willis during this period as the lion of the town 15 Willis began publishing poetry in his father s Boston Periodical often using one of two literary personalities under the pen names Roy for religious subjects and Cassius for more secular topics 11 The same year Willis published a volume of poetical Sketches 4 Literary career Edit In the latter part of the 1820s Willis began contributing more frequently to magazines and periodicals In 1829 he served as editor for the gift book The Token making him the only person to be editor in the book s 15 year history besides its founder Samuel Griswold Goodrich 16 That year Willis founded the American Monthly Magazine 11 which began publishing in April 1829 until it was discontinued in August 1831 4 He blamed its failure on the tight purses of Boston culture 14 and moved to Europe to serve as foreign editor and correspondent of the New York Mirror 4 In 1832 while in Florence Italy he met Horatio Greenough who sculpted a bust of the writer 17 Between 1832 and 1836 Willis contributed a series of letters for the Mirror about half of which were later collected as Pencillings by the Way printed in London in 1835 18 The romantic descriptions of scenes and modes of life in Europe sold well despite the then high price tag of 7 a copy The work became popular and boosted Willis s literary reputation enough that an American edition was soon issued 19 American Scenery by N P Willis with illustration by William Henry Bartlett 1840 Despite this popularity he was censured by some critics for indiscretion in reporting private conversations At one point he fought a bloodless duel with Captain Frederick Marryat then editor of the Metropolitan Magazine after Willis sent a private letter of Marryat s to George Pope Morris who had it printed 20 Still in 1835 Willis was popular enough to introduce Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to important literary figures in England including Ada Byron daughter of Lord Byron 21 While abroad Willis wrote to a friend I should like to marry in England 22 He soon married Mary Stace daughter of General William Stace of Woolwich on October 1 1835 after a month long engagement 23 The couple took a two week honeymoon in Paris 22 The couple moved to London where in 1836 Willis met Charles Dickens who was working for the Morning Chronicle at the time 24 In 1837 Willis and his wife returned to the United States 25 and settled at a small estate on Owego Creek in New York just above its junction with the Susquehanna River 26 He named the home Glenmary and the 200 acre 0 81 km2 rural setting inspired him to write Letters from under a Bridge 27 On October 20 1838 Willis began a series of articles called A New Series of Letters from London one of which suggested an illicit relationship between writer Letitia Elizabeth Landon and editor William Jordan The article caused some scandal for which Willis s publisher had to apologize 28 On June 20 1839 Willis s play Tortesa the Usurer premiered in Philadelphia at the Walnut Street Theatre 29 Edgar Allan Poe called it by far the best play from the pen of an American author 30 That year he was also editor of the short lived periodical The Corsair for which he enlisted William Makepeace Thackeray to write short sketches of France 31 Another major work Two Ways of Dying for a Husband was published in England during a short visit there in 1839 1840 Shortly after returning to the United States his personal life was touched with grief when his first child was stillborn on December 4 1840 He and Stace had a second daughter Imogen who was born June 20 1842 32 Later that year Willis attended a ball in honor of Charles Dickens in New York After dancing with Dickens s wife Willis and Dickens went out for rum toddy and broiled oysters 24 By this time his fame had grown enough that he was often invited to lecture and recite poetry including his presentation to the Linonian Society at Yale on August 17 1841 33 Willis was invited to submit a column to the each weekly issue of Brother Jonathan a publication from New York with 20 000 subscribers which he did until September 1841 34 By 1842 Willis was earning the unusually high salary of 4 800 a year As a later journalist remarked this made Willis the first magazine writer who was tolerably well paid 35 Evening Mirror Edit Willis became the highest paid magazine writer in America Returning to New York City Willis reorganized along with George Pope Morris the weekly New York Mirror as the daily Evening Mirror 25 in 1844 with a weekly supplement called the Weekly Mirror in part due to the rising cost of postage 36 By this time Willis was a popular writer a joke was that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was Germany s version of N P Willis and one of the first commercially successful magazine writers in America 37 In the fall of that year he also became the first editor of the annual gift book The Opal founded by Rufus Wilmot Griswold 38 During this time he became the highest paid magazine writer in America earning about 100 per article and 5 000 per year 37 a number which would soon double Even the popular poet Longfellow admitted his jealousy of Willis s salary 3 As a critic Willis did not believe in including discussions of personalities of writers when reviewing their works He also believed that though publications should discuss political topics they should not express party opinions or choose sides 39 The Mirror flourished at a time when many publications were discontinuing Its success was due to the shrewd management of Willis and Morris and the two demonstrated that the American public could support literary endeavors 40 Willis was becoming an expert in American literature and so in 1845 Willis and Morris issued an anthology The Prose and Poetry of America 41 While Willis was editor of the Evening Mirror its issue for January 29 1845 included the first printing of Poe s poem The Raven with his name attached In his introduction Willis called it unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception masterly ingenuity of versification and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it 42 Willis and Poe were close friends and Willis helped Poe financially during his wife Virginia s illness and while Poe was suing Thomas Dunn English for libel 43 Willis often tried to persuade Poe to be less destructive in his criticism and concentrate on his poetry 44 Even so Willis published many pieces of what would later be referred to as The Longfellow War a literary battle between Poe and the supporters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow whom Poe called overrated and guilty of plagiarism 45 Willis also introduced Poe to Fanny Osgood the two would later carry out a very public literary flirtation 46 Willis s wife Mary Stace died in childbirth on March 25 1845 Their daughter Blanche died as well and Willis wrote in his notebook that she was an angel without fault or foible 47 He took his surviving daughter Imogen to England to visit her mother s family 48 In October 1846 he married Cornelia Grinnell a wealthy Quaker from New Bedford 49 and the adopted daughter of a local Congressman 50 She was two decades younger than Willis at the time and vocally disliked slavery unlike her new husband 51 Home Journal Edit In 1846 Willis and Morris left the Evening Mirror and attempted to edit a new weekly the National Press which was renamed the Home Journal after eight months 52 Their prospectus for the publication published November 21 1846 announced their intentions to create a magazine to circle around the family table 53 Willis intended the magazine for the middle and lower classes and included the message of upward social mobility using himself as an example often describing in detail his personal possessions 54 When discussing his own social climbing however he emphasized his frustrations rather than his successes endearing him to his audience 55 He edited the Home Journal until his death in 1867 It was renamed Town amp Country in 1901 and it is still published under that title as of 2020 During Willis s time at the journal he especially promoted the works of women poets including Frances Sargent Osgood Anne Lynch Botta Grace Greenwood and Julia Ward Howe 56 Willis and his editors favorably reviewed many works now considered important today including Henry David Thoreau s Walden and Nathaniel Hawthorne s The Blithedale Romance 57 Idlewild Edit Willis purchased a home in 1846 which he named Idlewild The home would later inspire the title of an 1855 book In 1846 Willis settled near the banks of Canterbury Creek near the Hudson River in New York and named his new home Idlewild 58 59 When Willis first visited the property the owners said it had little value and that it was an idle wild of which nothing could ever be made 60 He built a fourteen room cottage as he called it at the edge of a plateau by Moodna Creek next to a sudden 200 foot 61 m drop into a gorge Willis worked closely with the architect Calvert Vaux to carefully plan each gable and piazza to fully take advantage of the dramatic view of the river and mountains 61 Because of failing health Willis spent the remainder of his life chiefly in retirement at Idlewild His wife Cornelia was also recovering from a difficult illness after the birth of their first child together 49 a son named Grinnell who was born April 28 1848 They had four other children Lilian born April 27 1850 62 Edith born September 28 1853 Bailey born May 31 1857 and a daughter who died only a few minutes after her birth on October 31 1860 63 In 1850 Cornelia Willis re hired Harriet Jacobs a fugitive slave from North Carolina who had already before been working for the family as Imogen s nanny 64 When her legal owners came to New York in 1852 to force her back into slavery Cornelia Willis bought her freedom for 300 65 While working for the Willis family at Idlewild Jacobs wrote her autobiography published in 1861 Her biographer J F Yellin comments on the irony of the situation Idlewild had been conceived as a famous writer s retreat but its owner never imagined that it was his children s nurse who would create an American classic there 66 Jacobs stayed with the Willis family until after the publication of her book 67 Cornelia Willis is called a true friend 68 in the autobiography and the friendship lasted into the next generation ending only with the death of Louisa Jacobs at the home of Edith Willis Grinnell in 1917 69 During these last years at Idlewild Willis continued contributing a weekly letter to the Home Journal 63 In 1850 he assisted Rufus Wilmot Griswold in preparing an anthology of the works of Poe who had died mysteriously the year before Griswold also wrote the first biography of Poe in which he purposely set out to ruin the dead author s reputation Willis was one of the most vocal of Poe s defenders writing at one point The indictment for it deserves no other name is not true It is full of cruel misrepresentations It deepens the shadows unto unnatural darkness and shuts out the rays of sunshines that ought to relieve them 70 Willis was involved in the 1850 divorce suit between the actor Edwin Forrest and his wife Catherine Norton Sinclair Forrest 57 In January 1849 Forrest had found a love letter to his wife from fellow actor George W Jamieson 71 As a result he and Catherine separated in April 1849 He moved to Philadelphia and filed for divorce in February 1850 though the Pennsylvania legislature denied his application 72 Catharine went to live with the family of Parke Godwin and the separation became a public affair with newspapers throughout New York reporting on supposed infidelities and other gossip 73 Willis defended Catharine who maintained her innocence in the Home Journal and suggested that Forrest was merely jealous of her intellectual superiority 74 On June 17 1850 shortly after Forrest had filed for divorce in the New York Supreme Court 75 Forrest beat Willis with a gutta percha whip in New York s Washington Square shouting this man is the seducer of my wife 76 Willis who was recovering from a rheumatic fever at the time was unable to fight back 77 His wife soon received an anonymous letter with an accusation that Willis was in an adulterous relationship with Catherine Forrest 78 Willis later sued Forrest for assault and by March 1852 was awarded 2 500 plus court costs 77 Throughout the Forrest divorce case which lasted six weeks several witnesses made additional claims that Catherine Forrest and Nathaniel Parker Willis were having an affair including a waiter who claimed he had seen the couple lying on each other 78 As the press reported thousands and thousands of the anxious public awaited the court s verdict ultimately the court sided with Catherine Forrest and Willis s name was cleared 79 Ruth Hall Edit Willis arbitrarily refused to print the work of his sister Sara Willis Fanny Fern after 1854 56 though she previously had contributed anonymous book reviews to the Home Journal 7 She had recently been widowed became destitute and was publicly denounced by her abusive second husband 80 Criticizing what he perceived as her restlessness Willis once made her the subject of his poem To My Wild Sis 81 As Fanny Fern she had published Fern Leaves which sold over 100 000 copies the year before 82 Willis however did not encourage his sister s writings You overstrain the pathetic and your humor runs into dreadful vulgarity sometimes I am sorry that any editor knows that a sister of mine wrote some of these which you sent me he wrote 83 In 1854 she published Ruth Hall a Domestic Tale of the Present Time 84 a barely concealed semi autobiographical account of her own difficulties in the literary world Nathaniel Willis was represented as Hyacinth Ellet an effeminate self serving editor who schemes to ruin his sister s prospects as a writer 85 Willis did not publicly protest but in private he asserted that despite his fictitious equivalent he had done his best to support his sister during her difficult times especially after the death of her first husband 86 Among his later works following in his traditional sketches about his life and people he has met were Hurry Graphs 1851 Out Doors at Idlewild 1854 and Ragbag 1855 Willis had complained that his magazine writing prevented him from writing a longer work He finally had the time in 1856 and he wrote his only novel Paul Fane which was published a year later 87 The character Bosh Blivins who served as comic relief in the novel may have been based on painter Chester Harding 88 His final work was The Convalescent 1859 which included a chapter on his time spent with Washington Irving at Sunnyside 89 Final years and death Edit Grave of Nathaniel Parker Willis In July 1860 Willis took his last major trip Along with his wife he stopped in Chicago and Yellow Springs Ohio as far west as Madison Wisconsin and also took a steamboat down the Mississippi River to St Louis Missouri and returned through Cincinnati Ohio and Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 90 In 1861 Willis allowed the Home Journal to break its pledge to avoid taking sides in political discussions when the Confederate States of America was established calling the move a purposeful act to bring on war 91 On May 28 1861 Willis was part of a committee of literary figures including William Cullen Bryant Charles Anderson Dana and Horace Greeley to invite Edward Everett to speak in New York on behalf of maintaining the Union 92 The Home Journal lost many subscribers during the American Civil War Morris died in 1864 and the Willis family had to take in boarders and for a time turned Idlewild into a girls school for income 93 Willis was very sick in these final years he suffered from violent epileptic seizures and early in November 1866 fainted in the streets 94 Willis died on his 61st birthday January 20 1867 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge Massachusetts 95 Four days later the day of his funeral all bookstores in the city were closed as a token of respect 95 His pallbearers included Longfellow James Russell Lowell Oliver Wendell Holmes Samuel Gridley Howe and James T Fields 96 Reputation Edit Daguerreotype of Willis circa 1857 Throughout his literary career Willis was well liked and known for his good nature amongst friends Well traveled and clever he had a striking appearance at six feet tall and was typically dressed elegantly Many however remarked that Willis was effeminate Europeanized and guilty of Miss Nancyism One editor called him an impersonal passive verb a pronoun of the feminine gender 37 A contemporary caricature depicted him wearing a fashionable beaver hat and tightly closed coat and carrying a cane reflecting Willis s wide reputation as a dandy 97 Willis put considerable effort into his appearance and his fashion sense presenting himself as a member of an upcoming American aristocracy 98 As Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr once said Willis was something between a remembrance of Count D Orsay and an anticipation of Oscar Wilde 99 Publisher Charles Frederick Briggs once wrote that Willis was too Willisy 100 He described his writings as the novelty and gossip of the hour and was not necessarily concerned about facts but with the material of conversation and speculation which may be mere rumor may be the truth 101 Willis s behavior in social groups annoyed fellow poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow He is too artificial Longfellow wrote to his friend George Washington Greene And his poetry has now lost one of its greatest charms for me its sincerity 102 E Burke Fisher a journalist in Pittsburgh wrote that Willis is a kind of national pet and we must regard his faults as we do those of a spoiled stripling in the hope that he will amend 103 Willis built up his reputation in the public at a time when readers were interested in the personal lives of writers 104 In his writings he described the high life of the Upper Ten Thousand a phrase he coined 99 His travel writings in particular were popular for this reason 105 as Willis was actually living the life he was describing and recommending to readers 106 Even so he manufactured a humble and modest persona questioned his own literary merit and purposely used titles such as Pencillings by the Way and Dashes at Life With Free Pencil which downplayed their own quality 55 His informally toned editorials which covered a variety of topics were also very successful 105 Using whimsicality and humor he was purposely informal to allow his personality to show in his writing 107 He addressed his readers personally as if having a private conversation with them As he once wrote We would have you indulge us in our innocent egotism as if it were all whispered in your private ear and over our iced Margaux 108 When women poets were becoming popular in the 1850s he emulated their style and focused on sentimental and moral subjects 109 In the publishing world Willis was known as a shrewd magazinist and an innovator who focused on appealing to readers special interests while still recognizing new talent 110 In fact Willis became the standard by which other magazinists were judged According to writer George William Curtis His gayety sic and his graceful fluency made him the first of our proper magazinists 111 For a time it was said that Willis was the most talked about author in the United States 112 Poe questioned Willis s fame however Willis is no genius a graceful trifler no more he wrote in a letter to James Russell Lowell In me at least he never excites an emotion 113 Minor Southern writer Joseph Beckham Cobb wrote No sane person we are persuaded can read his poetry 114 Future senator Charles Sumner reported I find Willis is much laughed at for his sketches 115 Even so most contemporaries recognized how prolific he was as a writer and how much time he put into all of his writings James Parton said of him Of all the literary men whom I have ever known N P Willis was the one who took the most pains with his work It was no very uncommon thing for him to toil over a sentence for an hour and I knew him one evening to write and rewrite a sentence for two hours before he had got it to his mind 116 By 1850 and with the publication of Hurry Graphs Willis was becoming a forgotten celebrity In August 1853 future President James A Garfield discussed Willis s declining popularity in his diary Willis is said to be a licentious man although an unrivaled poet How strange that such men should go to ruin when they might soar perpetually in the heaven of heavens 117 After Willis s death obituaries reported that he had outlived his fame 118 One remarked the man who withdraws from the whirling currents of active life is speedily forgotten 93 This obituary also stated that Americans will ever remember and cherish Nathaniel P Willis as one worthy to stand with Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving 119 In 1946 the centennial issue of Town amp Country reported that Willis led a generation of Americans through a gate where weeds gave way to horticulture 99 More modern scholars have dismissed Willis s work as sentimental prattle or refer to him only as an obstacle in the progress of his sister as well as Harriet Jacobs 120 As biographer Thomas N Baker wrote Willis is today only referred to as a footnote in relation to other authors 112 Selected list of works EditProse Sketches 1827 121 Pencillings by the Way 1835 122 Inklings of Adventure 1836 122 A l Abri or The Tent Pitched 1839 122 Loiterings of Travel 1840 122 The Romance of Travel 1840 American Scenery 2 volumes 1840 Canadian Scenery 2 volumes 1842 Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil 1845 123 Rural Letters and Other Records of Thoughts at Leisure 1849 123 People I Have Met 1850 123 Life Here and There 1850 123 Hurry Graphs 1851 123 Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean 1853 123 Fun Jottings or Laughs I Have Taken a Pen to 1853 123 Health Trip to the Tropics 1854 123 Ephemera 1854 123 Famous Persons and Places 1854 123 Out Doors at Idlewild or The Shaping of a Home on the Banks of the Hudson 1855 123 The Rag Bag A Collection of Ephemera 1855 123 Paul Fane or Parts of a Life Else Untold A Novel 1857 123 The Convalescent 1859 124 Plays Bianca Visconti or The Heart Overtasked A Tragedy in Five Acts 1839 122 Tortesa or The Userer Matched 1839 122 Poetry Fugitive Poetry 1829 121 Melanie and Other Poems 1831 125 The Sacred Poems of N P Willis 1843 125 Poems of Passion 1843 125 Lady Jane and Humorous Poems 1844 123 The Poems Sacred Passionate and Humorous 1868 125 References Edit a b Baker 3 Beers 262 a b Baker 88 a b c d Lapidos Julet Old New Haven The Advocate March 17 2005 Auser 19 Baker 16 a b Baker 160 Warren Joyce W Fanny Fern An Independent Woman New Brunswick New Jersey Rutgers University Press 1992 5 ISBN 0 8135 1763 X a b Auser 20 Phillips 909 a b c Auser 21 Pattee 500 Lewis R W B The American Adam Innocence Tragedy and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century Chicago The University of Chicago Press 1955 68 a b Phillips 910 Callow 83 Vanderbilt Kermit American Literature and the Academy The Roots Growth and Maturity of a Profession Philadelphia The University of Pennsylvania Press 1986 55 ISBN 0 8122 1291 6 Callow 86 Pattee 515 Baker 84 Auser 46 Calhoun Charles C Longfellow A Rediscovered Life Boston Beacon Press 2004 ISBN 0 8070 7026 2 p 98 a b Baker 76 Beers 170 171 a b Beers 264 a b Phillips 911 Baker 86 Ehrlich Eugene and Gorton Carruth The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States New York Oxford University Press 1982 163 ISBN 0 19 503186 5 Auser 47 48 Quinn 284 Meyers 152 Callow 111 Beers 263 264 Beers 271 Beers 259 260 Beers 260 261 Quinn 434 a b c Silverman 223 Bayless 83 Auser 23 Auser 51 52 Auser 118 Silverman 237 Meyers 202 Meyers 184 Silverman 234 235 Meyers 174 Beers 276 Yellin 83 a b Baker 122 Beers 287 Yellin 109 Auser 125 Auser 125 126 Tomc 785 786 a b Tomc 794 a b Auser 130 a b Auser 132 Auser 142 The first floor of the former three story brick home is still standing in an area known as Cornwall on Hudson New York at 20 Idlewild Park Drive it is a private home See Ehrlich Eugene and Gorton Carruth The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States New York Oxford University Press 1982 106 ISBN 0 19 503186 5 Beers 328 Yellin 126 Beers 294 a b Beers 329 Yellin 70 83 Yellin 114 116 Yellin 126 Yellin 150 Jacobs Harriet A Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Harvard University Press 2000 190 Jacobs changes all names in her book Willis becomes Bruce Yellin 70 265 Quinn 666 667 Baker 116 Beers 309 Baker 117 Beers 311 Beers 312 Baker 115 a b Beers 313 a b Yellin 112 Yellin 113 Yellin 132 Baker 161 Baker 164 Baker 163 Auser 334 Baker 170 Auser 336 337 Auser 101 Callow 84 Beers 332 333 Beers 340 341 Auser 128 Auser 128 129 a b Baker 188 Yellin 201 a b Beers 350 Baker 187 Reilly John E Poe in Pillory An Early Version of a Satire by A J H Duganne Poe Studies vol VI no 1 June 1973 10 Accessed June 5 2008 Baker 97 a b c Tomc 783 Thomas Dwight and David K Jackson The Poe Log A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809 1849 New York G K Hall amp Co 1987 514 ISBN 0 7838 1401 1 Baker 87 Thompson Lawrance Young Longfellow 1807 1843 New York The Macmillan Company 1938 215 Thomas Dwight and David K Jackson The Poe Log A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809 1849 New York G K Hall amp Co 1987 266 ISBN 0 7838 1401 1 Baker 6 a b Auser 54 Tomc 786 Callow 113 Tomc 784 Watts Emily Stipes The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945 Austin Texas University of Texas Press 1978 73 74 ISBN 0 292 76450 2 Auser 146 Pattee 499 a b Baker 4 Quinn 389 Hubbell Jay B The South in American Literature 1607 1900 Durham North Carolina Duke University Press 1954 638 Baker 100 Tomc 795 796 Baker 158 Beers 351 Obituary Nathaniel Parker Willis The New York Times January 22 1867 Accessed May 11 2008 Tomc 799 800 a b Beers 353 a b c d e f Beers 354 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Beers 355 Beers 356 a b c d Auser 165 Sources Edit Auser Cortland P Nathaniel P Willis New York Twayne Publishers Inc 1969 Baker Thomas N Sentiment and Celebrity Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame New York Oxford University Press 2001 ISBN 0 19 512073 6 Bayless Joy Rufus Wilmot Griswold Poe s Literary Executor Nashville Vanderbilt University Press 1943 Beers Henry A Nathaniel Parker Willis Boston Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 Callow James T Kindred Spirits Knickerbocker Writers and American Artists 1807 1855 Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina Press 1967 Meyers Jeffrey Edgar Allan Poe His Life and Legacy New York Cooper Square Press 1992 ISBN 0 8154 1038 7 Pattee Fred Lewis The First Century of American Literature 1770 1870 New York Cooper Square Publishers 1966 Phillips Mary E Edgar Allan Poe The Man Volume II Chicago The John C Winston Co 1926 Quinn Arthur Hobson Edgar Allan Poe A Critical Biography New York Appleton Century Crofts Inc 1941 ISBN 0 8018 5730 9 Silverman Kenneth Edgar A Poe Mournful and Never ending Remembrance New York Harper Perennial 1991 ISBN 0 06 092331 8 Tomc Sandra An Idle Industry Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Workings of Literary Leisure American Quarterly Vol 49 Issue 4 December 1997 780 805 Yellin Jean Fagan Harriet Jacobs A Life Cambridge Massachusetts Basic Civitas Books 2004 ISBN 0 465 09288 8External links Edit Wikisource has original works by or about Nathaniel Parker Willis Wikiquote has quotations related to Nathaniel Parker Willis Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nathaniel Parker Willis Works by Nathaniel Parker Willis at Project Gutenberg Works by Nathaniel Parker Willis at Faded Page Canada Works by or about Nathaniel Parker Willis at Internet Archive Works by Nathaniel Parker Willis at LibriVox public domain audiobooks Death of Edgar Poe by Nathaniel Parker Willis From the Home Journal October 20 1849 Courtesy of The Edgar Allan Poe Society Online Summer cruise in the Mediterranean on board an American frigate by Nathaniel Parker Willis Nathaniel Parker Willis vs Edwin Forrest from The New York Times May 2 1852 Letter from Idlewild from Home Journal February 21 1852 Nathaniel Parker Willis at Library of Congress Authorities with 119 catalog records Finding aid to Nathaniel Parker Willis letters at Columbia University Rare Book amp Manuscript Library Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Nathaniel Parker Willis amp oldid 1105141237, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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