On a steamy July day in 1864, a man stumbled and fell in his dingy room at the North American Hotel on the Bowery in New York City. When help finally arrived, Stephen Collins Foster lay bleeding, having struck his head on a washbasin. In his pockets, rescuers found a purse containing thirty-eight cents and a scrap of paper bearing the words "dear friends and gentle hearts." Three days later, on January 13, 1864, Fost…
“I have done a great deal to build up a taste for the Ethiopian songs among refined people by making the words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Hymn Writers, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
Philip Morin Freneau was born on 2 January 1752 in New York City and died on 18 December 1832 near his home in Monmouth County, New Jersey. During his long and restless life, he became a poet, sailor, merchant, editor, polemicist, farmer, husband, father, and partisan journalist. He has often been called the “Poet of the American Revolution,” a useful but incomplete title. Freneau did give memorable literary shape to…
“This is the last time I shall enter into such a business; it worries me to death and by no means suits my giddy, wandring brain.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Augustan Poets, Colonial American Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Sorrow, Despair
