The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (Household Edition)

xiv, 450 pp. Brown cloth boards with embossed flower decor on spine and front board, edges beveled. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: "John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 - September 7, 1892) was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. John Greenleaf Whittier was born to John and Abigail (Hassey) at their rural homestead in Haverhill, Massachusetts on December 17, 1807. He grew up on the farm in a household with his parents, a brother and two sisters, a maternal aunt and paternal uncle, and a constant flow of visitors and hired hands for the farm. Their farm was not very profitable there was only enough money to get by. John himself was not cut out for hard farm labor and suffered from bad health and physical frailty his whole life. Although he received little formal education, he was an avid reader who studied his father's six books on Quakerism until their teachings became the foundation of his ideology. Whittier was heavily influenced by the doctrines of his religion, particularly its stress on humanitarianism, compassion, and social responsibility. First introduced to poetry by a teacher, Whittier published his first poem in 1826 in William Lloyd Garrison's Newburyport Free Press, a connection that began their devoted friendship. John then attended Haverhill Academy from 1827 to 1828 and completed a high school education in only two terms. After this, Garrison secured the young writer an editorial position for the American Manufacturer in Boston. Whittier became an out-spoken critic of President Andrew Jackson, and by 1830 was editor of the prominent New England Weekly Review in Hartford, Connecticut, the most influential Whig journal in New England. In 1833 he published The Song of the Vermonters, 1779, which he had anonymously inserted in The New England Magazine. The poem was erroneously attributed to Ethan Allen for nearly sixty years." -- Wikipedia