Stephen Vincent Benet drew upon American themes for his work, but his best-known poem, John Brown's Body (1928), was written in Paris. Benet was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the son of a professional soldier with a deep interest in American history. This interest and the family's nomadic movement between widely separated American army bases had a decisive influence on Benet's choice and development of the American themes which are at the heart of his work.

At the age of fifteen he began to write seriously, and by the time he entered Yale two years later, he had published his first volume of poetry, Five Men and Pompey (1915). Following brief stints in the army and the State Department, he graduated from Yale in 1919 and earned a master of arts degree there a year later. He spent 1920-1921 on a Yale traveling fellowship to Paris, where he completed his first novel...