William Cullen Bryant (1794 – 1878), celebrated American author who embraced Romanticism, was an accomplished poet and journalist who served as the longtime editor of the New York Evening Post. He was considered one of the New England “Fireside Poets” who believed the poet’s role was prophet and societal critic, inspiring family-friendly verses to be enjoyed while gathered around the hearth. Other members included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., John Greenleaf Whittier, and James Russell Lowell. Bryant’s reverie for nature was carried on in the prose and verse of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Bryant’s most famous work is his poem, Thanatopsis, featured in our collection of Poetry for the Well-Read Student and Transcendentalism Study Guide.