“Whenever practicable, I have stepped aside and let the people I met…” — John Townsend Trowbridge | V2Melody

“Whenever practicable, I have stepped aside and let the people I met speak for themselves.”

A principle of letting witnesses carry the narrative · Preface, The South: A Tour of Its Battlefields and Ruined Cities

John Townsend Trowbridge

About John Townsend Trowbridge

John Townsend Trowbridge

18 September 1827–12 February 1916

In the pantheon of nineteenth-century American letters, John Townsend Trowbridge occupies a curious position—neither forgotten nor fully remembered, a writer whose prolific output and genuine popularity during his lifetime have faded into the scholarly margins, yet whose contribution to American literature…

More by John Townsend Trowbridge

Poems by John Townsend Trowbridge

More remarks by John Townsend Trowbridge

“I still go back occasionally to the old Leaves of Grass and find in them the same unfailing freshness and power, which repeated readings in no wise dull to the sense—a test which only master studies in literature can stand.”

Praise of lasting freshness as the mark of a master work · Letter to Walt Whitman, 30 April 1875

“I could never forget those bitter experiences, which I trust made me somewhat tender of the feelings of literary aspirants, when in later years it came my turn to exercise a little brief authority in an editorial chair.”

Early rebuffs remembered as a check on later editorial power · Memoir, My Own Story

“Here was life, and I was young!”

Arrival in New York as a nineteen-year-old with no introductions and no plan but hope · Memoir, My Own Story