Author: Whittier, John Greenleaf
Biography:
WHITTIER, John Greenleaf (1807-92: ANBO)
Whittier was born on the family farm near Haverhill MA; his parents, Abigail (Hussey) and John Whittier, were devout Quakers. Though he was not strong he was needed on the farm and therefore remained largely unschooled until 1827-8 when he worked his way through two terms at the newly opened Haverhill Academy. He did however receive a basic education, was a voracious reader, and privately composed poetry from the age of fourteen. The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (q.v.) accepted his first poem--sent without Whittier's knowledge by his sister--for publication in the Newburyport Free Press. His time at the Academy marked the start of his career as an author, with an estimated 150 poems contributed to periodicals. It led also to his career as an editor: of the Haverhill Gazette (1829), New England Weekly Review (1830-32), Pennsylvania Freeman (1838-9), and others. He was later one of the founders of the Atlantic Monthly (1857). His most important political and social mission arose from his opposition to slavery. He was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833) and a courageous advocate of abolition in the state legislature (1835) as well as in his writings and editorial work. Having sold the family farm, he moved with his mother and his sister Elizabeth to Amesbury MA, where he settled permanently in 1840. Of many volumes of verse, increasingly popular, the most successful was Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl (1866). Collections of his work began to appear in the 1860s, culminating in the Riverside edition of his Writings in seven vols. (1888-9), which he himself saw through the press. He was predeceased by his mother and sister, never married, and died quietly in Hampton Falls NH. A typical newspaper headline at the time was "The Quaker Poet Slips to Sleep." He is buried in the Union Cemetery, Amesbury. (ANBO 3 Feb. 2021; ancestry.com 3 Feb. 2021; WorldCat; Tacoma Daily News 7 Sept. 1892) HJ
Other Names:
- John G. Whittier