William Henry Timrod

William Henry Timrod (born July 15, 1792 near Charleston , South Carolina , † July 28, 1838 in Charleston) was an American bookbinder and poet.

life and work

William Henry Timrod was born the son of German immigrants on a tobacco plantation in South Carolina. He learned the bookbinding trade and opened his own workshop in Charleston in 1812, which in the following years developed into a meeting place for the city's writers such as William Gilmore Simms ; the literary circle around Simms was also known as Timrod's club . Timrod also had poetic ambitions himself. In 1814 he published his only volume of poems Poems on Various Subjects with mostly humorous, partly folkloric poems that show the influence of the “anti-pastoral” burlesques of English baroque literature such as John Gay's Shepherd's Week . Timrod can thus be seen as an early representative of a specific southern humor, which, with authors like Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, shaped the literature of the region, especially from 1830 onwards. He also wrote and published several occasional poems , such as the very pathetic Ode Sons of the Union on the occasion of the nullification crisis in 1828 ! , in which appealed to the unity of the American nation and its citizens.

Timrods pronounced patriotism led him in 1836 also serves as the leader of a Charleston volunteer corps, the "German Fusiliers" ( German fusiliers ), in the Second Seminole War to draw. Timrod's militia entered the poorly fortified town of St. Augustine , Florida, threatened by Indian attacks , but saw no fighting in the five months of their stay. After his return, Timrod became seriously ill, possibly with tuberculosis, or perhaps he had contracted a tropical fever in Florida.

Timrod died in Charleston on July 28, 1838. He left behind his wife Thyrza (nee Prince), three daughters and only son Henry Timrod , who would later become famous as a poet during the American Civil War . Henry Timrod also sent five poems and a biographical note to Evert A. Duyckinck in 1855 for inclusion in his Cyclopedia of American Literature ; For his pioneering compendium of American literature, Duyckinck only took over the poem To Harry , an ode to and about his son Henry, who at the time was still an infant. Aside from this isolated anthologization, Timrod's poems were completely forgotten and only in the past few decades have they occasionally come back into the focus of literary scholars.

literature

• Guy A. Cardwell, Jr: William Henry Timrod, the Charleston Volunteers, and the Defense of St Augustine. In: North Carolina Historical Review XVIII, January 1941. pp. 27-37.
• Helene M. Riley: German Romanticism in Old Charleston? The bookbinder and poet William Henry Timrod (1792-1838) . In: Aurora. Yearbook of the Eichendorff Society 54, Würzburg 1994. pp. 204–220.
• JA Leo Lemay: The Origins of the Humor of the Old South . In: M. Thomas Inge and Edward J. Piacentino (eds.): The Humor of the Old South . University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 2001.
• Walter Brian Cisco: Henry Timrod: A Biography . Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison 2004. (Biography of Timrod's son Henry; in the first few chapters also biographical information on the father)