Thomas Wentworth Higginson

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Signature Thomas Wentworth Higginsons
Higginsons grave in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (born December 22, 1823 in Cambridge , Massachusetts , † May 9, 1911 ) was an American writer and abolitionist .

Life

Higginson studied at Harvard University and then theology at Harvard Divinity School . He then held a Unitarian preaching position in Newburyport , which he gave up in 1850 to join the abolitionist movement. From 1852 to 1858 he served as a clergyman in Worcester .

In 1850 he ran as a member of the Free Soil Party for a seat in the US Congress . In 1853 he was indicted in Boston along with the well-known abolitionists Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker for supporting the escaped slave Anthony Burns. He also campaigned against the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 , which provided for the establishment of the states of Kansas and Nebraska , in which the population should be allowed to decide on the slave question for themselves.

After the outbreak of the American Civil War he became captain of the Union Army in Kansas, and in 1862 colonel of the first regiment consisting of blacks (see also Buffalo Soldier ). Higginson had to resign as a result of an injury in 1863 and settled in Newport , Rhode Island , where he made a name for himself as a writer. He is the editor of the poems of Emily Dickinson and was the first collector of African-American spirituals . In 1892 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1898 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Works

  • Outdoor Papers , 1863
  • Malbone: An Oldport Romance , 1869 (newer edition: ISBN 1-4043-1602-7 )
  • Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli , in the American Men of Letters series , 1884 (newer edition: ISBN 1-4102-2408-2 )
  • A Larger History of the United States of America to the Close of President Jackson's Administration , 1885
  • The Monarch of Dreams , 1886
  • Travelers and Outlaws , 1889 (newer edition: ISBN 1-4142-2118-5 )
  • The Afternoon Landscape , 1889 (poems and translations)
  • Concerning All of Us , 1892
  • The Procession of the Flowers and Kindred Papers , 1897
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , in the American Men of Letters series , 1902
  • John Greenleaf Whittier , in the English Men of Letters series , 1902 (newer edition: ISBN 1-4102-1284-X )
  • A Readers History of American Literature , 1903 (Lectures at the Lowell Institute of 1903, edited by Henry W. Boynton)
  • Life and Times of Stephen Higginson , 1907
  • Oldport Days (newer edition: ISBN 1-4043-2226-4 )
  • Army Life in a Black Regiment (newer edition: ISBN 1-58218-358-9 )
  • Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic (newer edition: ISBN 1-58963-658-9 )
  • Mrs. Helen Jackson (newer edition: ISBN 1-4191-3577-5 )
  • Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 1846-1906 , ISBN 0-8371-1843-3

literature

  • Marc Bauch : Extending the Canon: Thomas Wentworth Higginson and African-American Spirituals . Grin, Munich 2013.
  • Brenda Wineapple: White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson . Knopf, New York 2008, ISBN 978-1-4000-4401-6 .
  • Tilden G. Edelstein: Strange Enthusiasm: A Life of Thomas Wentworth Higginson . Yale University Press, New Haven 1968.
  • Howard N. Meyer: Colonel of the Black Regiment: The Life of Thomas Wentworth Higginson . WW Norton & Company Inc., New York 1967.
  • Howard N. Meyer (Ed.): The Magnificent Activist: The Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911) . Da Capo Press, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 0-306-80954-0 .
  • Anna Mary Wells: Dear Preceptor: The Life and Times of Thomas Wentworth Higginson . Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1963.

Web links

Commons : Thomas Wentworth Higginson  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marc Bauch : Extending the Canon: Thomas Wentworth Higginson and African-American Spirituals . Grin, Munich 2013.
  2. ^ Members: Thomas Wentworth Higginson. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 3, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Higginson, Thomas Wentworth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and abolitionist
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1823
PLACE OF BIRTH Cambridge , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH May 9, 1911