Fitz-Greene Halleck (8 July 1790-19 December 1867), a Knickerbocker poet and man of letters, was born and died in Guilford, Connecticut. Halleck left Guilford at the age of twenty-one and entered into business in New York City. It was there that, in...

Fitz-Greene Halleck was one of the most popular and important American poets during the first half of the nineteenth century. A member of the Knickerbocker Group of New York, he was known as the American Byron because of his romantic and satirical...

John W. M. Hallock. The American Byron: Homosexuality and the Fall of Fitz-Greene Halleck. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2000. 226 pp. ISBN 0-299-16800-X, $50.00 cloth; ISBN 0-299-16804-2, $19.95 paper. This splendid biographical essay explores the life and poetry of Fitz-Greene Halleck...

JOHN HALLOCK. Univ. of Wisconsin, $50 (240p) ISBN 0-299-16800-X Hallock performs a dual service: he resurrects a significant though largely forgotten poet and he paints a fascinating portrait of homosexual life in 19th-century America. Although praised in his lifetime by such luminaries...

An influential American literary critic during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, George Parsons Lathrop helped establish realism as the dominant mode of literary expression. In the following excerpts from an article on Halleck's life and work, Lathrop examines several of Halleck's most popular works with a view to defining his historical and literary importance.

The first American poet to achieve an international reputation, Bryant also contributed to the development of American letters in his role as editor of several literary magazines and of the New York Evening Post. Halleck and Bryant met in New York in 1825 and maintained their friendship until Halleck's death; many of Halleck's poems first appeared in journals edited by Bryant. In the following excerpts from a paper on Halleck delivered before the New York Historical Society, Bryant recalls hi...

In the following excerpt, the reviewer comments on various poems in Halleck's 1836 collection, Alnwick Castle, with Other Poems, and discusses his transition from social satire to descriptive nature and landscape poetry and narrative.