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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Nathaniel Parker Willis Biography WILLIS,
Nathaniel Parker (1806-67). An American author, born in Portland, Me. He
graduated in 1827 at Yale College, where, as an undergraduate, he became known
as a writer of religious verse, some of it published as Scripture
Sketches (1827). For S. G. Goodrich (q.v.), of Boston, he edited two
annuals, The Legendary (1828) and The
Token (1829). In the latter year Willis established at Boston The
American Monthly Magazine; this in 1831 was merged with the New York Mirror,
of which he became associate editor. From 1831 to 1836 he traveled in Europe and
Asia Minor and contributed sketches to the Mirror,
which were later published in Pencillings
by the Way (3 vols., 1835). On his return to America he conducted a
short-lived weekly journal, The Corsair
(1839-40), and later two papers of brief existence, The
New Mirror (1843-44) and The Evening
Mirror (1844-45). In 1845 he went again to Europe, returning in 1846. The
same year he established The Home Journal,
which occupied him until his death at his estate, "Idlewild," at
Cornwall-on-Hudson, N. Y. His works include: Inklings of Adventure (1836, 3 vols.); Loiterings of Travel (1839, 3 vols.); Lady Jane, and Other Poems (1844); People I Have Met (1850); Life
Here and There (1850); Hurry-graphs,
or Sketches of Scenery, Celebrities, and Society (1851); A
Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean on Board an American Frigate (1853); A
Health Trip to the Tropics (1854); Famous
Persons and Places (1854); Out-Doors
at Idlewild (1854) The Rag-bag, a
Collection of Ephemera (1855) Paul
Fane (1856), a novel; The Convalescent
(1859); and others, chiefly prose. His complete poems appeared in 1868. His work
was ready, fluent, light, graceful, and various, in the main that of a
dilettante, and it was exceedingly popular during Willis's lifetime. His prose
yields interesting sketches of contemporaries. Willis was generous to
contemporary authors, but made many hostile critics by his indiscreetly personal
tone of writing. Consult: his Life by
H. A. Beers in the "American Men of Letters Series" (Boston, 1885); Selections
from his prose writings (New York, 1885) edited by H. A. Beers; and M. A. de
Wolfe Howe, in American Bookmen (ib.,
1898). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 592. |