“My veins are teeming with the quicksilver spirit which my mother gave me. Whatever I accomplish must be gained by ardor, and not by patience.”
About Nathaniel Parker Willis
20 January 1806–20 January 1867
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…