Josiah Gilbert Holland, known to his immense nineteenth-century readership as J. G. Holland and, in his newspaper essays, as “Timothy Titcomb,” was born on 24 July 1819 in Belchertown, Massachusetts, and died on 12 October 1881 in New York City. During his lifetime he occupied an unusually broad place in American literary culture: he was a physician by training, a journalist, editor, moral essayist, novelist, biograp…
“Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on what we're made of.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Sorrow
In the grand tapestry of 19th-century American literature, certain figures shine with the steady brilliance of established stars, while others flicker with a more complex, mercurial light. Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867) belongs decidedly to the latter category—a writer whose life and work embodied the tensions, aspirations, and contradictions of a young nation struggling to define its cultural identity. Neither…
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Romantic Poets, Transcendentalists, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Irony
