“I feel that, if I live frugally sincerely, and do not use up my mental…” — John Townsend Trowbridge | V2Melody

“I feel that, if I live frugally sincerely, and do not use up my mental energies in rapid writing I may be able to do something excellent.”

A private vow to slow the pace of work in hope of better writing · Letter to Walt Whitman, 6 January 1865

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

“What is now most desirable is not hypothesis or declamation, but the light of plain facts upon the momentous question of the hour, which must be settled upon broad grounds of Truth and Eternal Right.”

A reporter's plea for facts over rhetoric after the Civil War · Preface, The South: A Tour of Its Battlefields and Ruined Cities