James Russell Lowell

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), American poet, essayist, editor, diplomat, and critic, whose efforts on behalf of American writers brought them international attention for the first time.

Lowell, the grandson of the jurist John Lowell, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School. His first volume of poems, A Year's Life, was published in 1841, and was followed by a second volume, Poems, in 1844. In 1843 Lowell founded the short-lived literary magazine The Pioneer. His first book of literary criticism, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, appeared in 1845. In 1846 he wrote for the Boston Courier the first of the “Biglow Papers,” a series of satirical verses in Yankee dialect purporting to be by Hosea Biglow, a young New England farmer. The “Biglow Papers” served as a vehicle for expressing Lowell's opposition to the Mexican War (1846-1848), and in 1848 the first series of Biglow Papers was collected in book form. Also in that year Lowell's works A Fable for Critics, a book of witty, incisive verse about famous authors, and The Vision of Sir Launfal, a poem based on the legend of the Holy Grail, were published. In 1855 Lowell succeeded the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as professor of modern languages at Harvard, serving until 1876. He was the first editor of the Atlantic Monthly (1857 to 1861) and joint editor, with the American writer Charles Eliot Norton, of the North American Review from 1864 to 1872. Many of Lowell's best literary and critical essays appeared in these magazines and were later published in book form as Fireside Travels (1864), Among My Books (first series, 1870; second series, 1876), and My Study Windows (1871).

Meanwhile Lowell continued writing poetry. He delivered his “Commemoration Ode” at the memorial services in 1865 for the Harvard Civil War dead. He published the second series of Biglow Papers, which opposed slavery and supported the North during the Civil War (1861-1865), in book form in 1867. Lowell's other volumes of verse include Under the Willows (1869), The Cathedral (1870), Three Memorial Poems (1877), and Heartsease and Rue (1888). Political Essays also appeared in 1888. As minister to Spain (1877-1880) and to Britain (1880-1885), Lowell worked to raise European esteem of American culture.