Richard Henry Stoddard

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Richard Henry Stoddard (July 2, 1825 - May 12, 1903) was a U.S. critic and poet, was born in Hingham, Massachusetts.

He spent most of his boyhood in New York City, where he became a blacksmith and later an iron moulder, but in 1849 he gave up his trade and began to write for a living. He contributed to the Union Magazine, the Knickerbocker Magazine, Putnam's Monthly Magazine and the New York Evening Post. In 1853 Nathaniel Hawthorne helped him to secure the appointment of inspector of customs of the Port of New York.

He was confidential clerk to George B McClellan in the New York dock department in 1870-1872, and city librarian of New York in 1874-1875; literary reviewer for the New York World (1860-1870); one of the editors of Vanity Fair; editor of the Aldine (1869-1874), and literary editor of the Mail and Express (1880-1903). He died in New York on the 12th of May 1903.

Among the numerous books that he edited are:

The Loves and Heroines of the Poets (1861)
Melodies and Madrigals, Mostly from the old English Poets (1865)
The Late English Poets (1865), selections
Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America (1872)
Female Poets of America (1874)
The Bric-a-Brac Series, in 10 vols (1874-1876)
English Verse, in 5 vols edited with WJ Linton (1883)
four editions of Poe's works, with a memoir (1872-1894)

His original poetry includes:

Footprints (1849), privately printed and afterwards suppressed
Poems (1852)
Adventures in Fairyland (1853)
Town and Country (1857)
The Story of Little Red Riding Hood (1864)
Songs of Summer (1857)
The King's Bell (1862), one of his most popular narrative poems
Abraham Lincoln: A Horatian Ode (1865)
The Book of the East (1867)
Poems (1880), a collective edition
The Lion's Cub, with Other Verse (1890)

He also wrote:

Life, Travels and Books of Alexander von Humboldt (1860)
Under the Evening Lamp (1892), essays dealing mainly with the modern English poets
Recollections Personal and Literary (1903), edited by Ripley Hitchcock

More important than his critical was his poetical work, which at its best is sincere, original and marked by delicate fancy, and felicity of form; and his songs have given him a high and permanent place among American lyric poets. His wife, Elizabeth Drew Stoddard was also a novelist.