Stephen Vincent Benét

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Stephen Vincent Benét, 1919

Stephen Vincent Benét (born July 22, 1898 in Bethlehem , Pennsylvania , † March 13, 1943 in New York ) was an American writer .

life and work

Benét came from a family of military personnel who had served in the army for generations. Their attitude was accordingly patriotic, even if the boys devoted themselves to literature instead of the army. In addition to Stephen Vincent Benét, his brother William Rose Benét , his sister Laura, his wife Rosemary Carr and his sister-in-law Elinor Wylie were writers.

Benét studied in California, at Yale University and the Sorbonne in Paris . At that time he was already publishing his first poems . He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship which enabled him to write a lengthy epic about the American Civil War, John Brown's Body (1928). This work, which achieved great renown in America, earned Benét another Guggenheim grant and in 1929 the Pulitzer Prize . In 1929 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1931 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Benét was awarded the O. Henry Prize for short stories three times : in 1932 for An End to Dreams , 1937 for The Devil and Daniel Webster, and 1940 for Freedom's a Hard-Bought Thing . In the 1930s Benét worked as a literary assistant (secretary) for Karl Gustav Vollmoeller in the USA. Vollmoeller took over Benét from David Wark Griffith , for whom he had written film scripts.

In 1944, Benét received the Pulitzer Prize again posthumously for the unfinished verse epic Western Star . The Devil and Daniel Webster ( The Devil and Daniel Webster ) became one of the most famous American stories . William Dieterle filmed it in 1941 under the title All That Money Can Buy (Eng: The Devil and Daniel Webster ) with Walter Huston and Edward Arnold , and a Simpsons episode entitled Homer Simpson and the Devil (1993) testifies to the unbroken popularity history.

Due to the often fantastic themes of his works, he also had an influence on science fiction and therefore appears in corresponding reference works and anthologies .

Works

  • Five Men and Pompey , 1915
  • The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun (Yale University Prize Poem), 1917
  • Young Adventure , 1918
  • Heavens and Earth , 1920
  • The Beginnings of Wisdom , 1921 (short story)
  • Young People's Pride , 1922
  • Jean Huguenot , 1923
  • The Ballad of William Sycamore , 1923
  • King David , 1923
  • with John Farrar: Nerves , 1924
  • with John Farrar: That Awful Mrs. Eaton , 1924
  • Tiger Joy , 1925
  • The Mountain Whippoorwill: How Hill-Billy Jim Won the Great Fiddler's Prize , 1925
  • Spanish Bayonet , 1926
  • John Brown's Body , 1928 (Eng. He was a stone. An American Iliad . Amandus, Vienna 1962) - Dramatization by Charles Laughton 1953
  • The Barefoot Saint , 1929
  • The Litter of Rose Leaves , 1930
  • with Gerrit Lloyd: Abraham Lincoln , 1930 (screenplay)
  • Ballads and Poems , 1915-1930, 1931
  • together with Rosemary Carr Benét: A Book of Americans , 1933 (German A book about Americans , Vienna 1955)
  • James Shore's Daughter , 1934
  • The Burning City , 1936 (poems; contains Litany for Dictatorships )
  • The Magic of Poetry and the Poet's Art , 1936
  • By the Waters of Babylon , 1937 (Eng. On the waters of Babylon , Munich 1948)
  • The Headless Horseman , 1937
  • Thirteen O'Clock , 1937 (short stories, including By the Waters of Babylon , The Devil and Daniel Webster ) - setting: D. Moore, Oper 1939
  • Johnny Pye and the Fool Killer , 1938 (German Johnny Pye and the fool catcher , Munich 1948)
  • Tales Before Midnight , 1939
  • The Ballad of the Duke's Mercy , 1939
  • Nightmare at Noon, 1940
  • Elementals , 1940-41 (radio)
  • Freedom's Hard-Bought Thing , 1941 (radio)
  • Listen to the People , 1941
  • A Summons to the Free , 1941
  • with Adelaide Heilbron, Sheridan Gibney : Cheers for Miss Bishop , 1941 (screenplay)
  • Spanish Bayonet , 1942 (novel)
  • Selected Works , 1942 (2 volumes; Volume 1: Poems, Volume 2: Prose)
  • Short Stories , 1942
  • Nightmare at Noon , 1942 (in The Treasury Star Parade )
  • A Child is Born , 1942 (radio)
  • They Burned the Books , 1942 (radio)
  • As it Was in the Beginning (German: It's all a beginning , Ebenhausen near Munich 1956)

published posthumously:

  • Western Star , 1943 (unfinished)
  • Twenty-Five Short Stories , 1943 (stories; therein By the Waters of Babylon , The Devil and Daniel Webster ; German Daniel Webster and the sea snake. Stories , Munich 1948)
  • America , 1944 (German America , New York 1945)
  • O'Halloran's Luck and Other Short Stories , 1944
  • We Stand United , 1945 (radio texts)
  • The Bishop's Beggar , 1946 (story; German Des Bishop's Beggar , Wiesbaden 1953)
  • The Last Circle , 1946 (poems and short stories)
  • Selected Stories , 1947
  • From the Earth to the Moon , 1958
  • Good Picker (stories; Ger. Die gute Wahl. 6 Stories , Munich 1959)

Film adaptations

Dubbing

  • 2003: Carrying the name man , after the prayer of the United Nations , oratorio in 5 pictures, composition Thomas Erich Killinger

literature

  • John Clute : Benét, Stephen Vincent. In: John Clute, Peter Nicholls : The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction . 3rd edition (online edition), version dated April 4, 2017.
  • Charles A. Fenton: Stephen Vincent Benét: The Life and Times of an American Man of Letters, 1898-1943 . Yale University Press, New Haven 1958.
  • Parry Stroud: Stephen Vincent Benét . Twayne, New York 1962 (= Twayne's United States Authors Series 27).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Members: Stephen Vincent Benét. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 16, 2019 .
  2. ↑ <Schr. Vollmoellers to Max Reinhardt v. September 16, 1935, Max Reinhardt Archive Salzburg>
  3. ^ Hans Joachim Alpers , Werner Fuchs , Ronald M. Hahn : Reclam's science fiction guide. Reclam, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-15-010312-6 , p. 37.
personal data
SURNAME Benét, Stephen Vincent
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1943
Place of death New York City