Stephen Vincent Benét
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Stephen Vincent Benét (July 22, 1898 – March 13, 1943) was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benét is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body (1928), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "By the Waters of Babylon".
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[edit] Life and career
Benét was born into an Army family in Fountain Hill, Pennsylvania. He spent most of his boyhood in Benicia, California. At the age of about ten, Benét was sent to the Hitchcock Military Academy. A graduate of The Albany Academy in Albany, New York and Yale University, where he was a member of Wolf's Head Society and "the power behind the Yale Lit", according to Thornton Wilder. Benet published his book at age 17. He was awarded a M.A. in English upon submission of his third volume of poetry in lieu of a thesis.[1]
Benet's fantasy short story, The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937), won an O. Henry Award. He furnished the material for Scratch, a one-act opera by Douglas Moore. The story was filmed in 1941 and shown originally under the title All That Money Can Buy. Benét also wrote a sequel, Daniel Webster and the Sea Serpent, in which real-life historic figure Webster encounters the Leviathan of biblical legend.
Benét died of a heart attack in New York City at the age of 44. He was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for Western Star, an unfinished narrative poem on the settling of America.
It was a line of Benet's poetry that gave the title to Dee Brown's famous history of the destruction of Native American tribes by the United States, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
He also adapted the Roman myth of the rape of the Sabine Women into the story, The Sobbin' Women, which in turn was adapted into the movie musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
John Brown's Body was staged on Broadway in 1953, in a three-person dramatic reading featuring Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson, Raymond Massey, and directed by Charles Laughton.
Benet's brother, William Rose Benét, was a poet, anthologist and critic who is largely remembered for his desk reference, Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia (1948). He also had three children.
[edit] Selected works
- Five Men and Pompey, 1915
- The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun (Yale University Prize Poem), 1917[2]
- Young Adventure, 1918 (full text)
- Heavens and Earth, 1920
- The Beginnings of Wisdom, 1921
- Young People's Pride, 1922
- Jean Huguenot, 1923
- The Ballad of William Sycamore, 1923
- King David, 1923
- Nerves, 1924 (with John Farrar)
- That Awful Mrs. Eaton, 1924 (with John Farrar)
- Tiger Joy, 1925
- The Mountain Whippoorwill: How Hill-Billy Jim Won the Great Fiddler's Prize, 1925 (full text)
- Spanish Bayonet, 1926
- John Brown's Body, 1928
- The Barefoot Saint, 1929
- The Litter of Rose Leaves, 1930
- Abraham Lincoln, 1930 (screenplay with Gerrit Lloyd)
- Ballads and Poems, 1915-1930, 1931
- A Book of Americans, 1933 (with Rosemary Carr Benét)
- James Shore's Daughter, 1934
- The Burning City, 1936 (includes 'Litany for Dictatorships')
- The Magic of Poetry and the Poet's Art, 1936
- By the Waters of Babylon, 1937
- The Headless Horseman, 1937
- Thirteen O'Clock, 1937
- Johnny Pye and the Fool Killer, 1938
- Tales Before Midnight, 1939
- The Ballad of the Duke's Mercy, 1939
- Nightmare at Noon, 1940
- Elementals, 1940-41 (broadcast)
- Freedom's Hard-Bought Thing, 1941 (broadcast)
- Listen to the People, 1941
- A Summons to the Free, 1941
- Cheers for Miss Bishop, 1941 (screenplay with Adelaide Heilbron, Sheridan Gibney)
- They Burned the Books, 1942
- Selected Works, 1942 (2 vols.)
- Short Stories, 1942
- Nightmare at Noon, 1942 (in The Treasury Star Parade, ed. by William A. Bacher)
- A Child is Born, 1942 (broadcast)
- They Burned the Books, 1942 (broadcast)
These works were published posthumously:
- Western Star, 1943 (unfinished)
- Twenty Five Short Stories, 1943
- America, 1944
- O'Halloran's Luck and Other Short Stories, 1944
- We Stand United, 1945 (radio scripts)
- The Bishop's Beggar, 1946
- The Last Circle, 1946
- Selected Stories, 1947
- From the Earth to the Moon, 1958
[edit] References
- ^ The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 12, Micropaedia, 15th edition, Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. c. 1989
- ^ Stephen Vincent Benét, Nathan Wallach (1917). The Drug-shop, Or Endymion in Edmonstoun. Yale University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=eyMWGQAACAAJ.
- Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. pp. 46–47.
- Fenton, Charles A. (1958 repr. 1978). Stephen Vincent Benét: The Life and Times of an American Man of Letters, 1898-1943. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313202001.
[edit] External links
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