Title: William Cullen Bryant | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: Bryant, William Cullen
Bryant, William Cullen
Bryant, William Cullen
Overview
Personal Life
Career Details
Social and Economic Impact
Chronology: William Cullen Bryant
Sources of Information
Bibliography
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant
"Thanatopsis" and Other Poems
Poetic Theories
The Editor
Further Reading
Bryant, William Cullen

Content: In 1811, when he was just 17, he began a long poem that would bring him great acclaim a few years later when he finally revised it and sought a publisher. That poem was "Thanatopsis," taken from the Greek term for "view of death." It was a classical language which Bryant had studied, as was the custom of the day. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of "Thanatopsis," according to the Encyclopedia of World Biography, "is its anti-Christian, stoical view of death." Exploration of such abstract ideas in literary works was becoming popular in the culture of Western civilization at the time, and death was a common theme for poets of this era in England. Bryant was also greatly influenced by English Romantic poets, especially William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. "Thanatopsis," published in 1817, launched Bryant as a new and important American writer. The established U.S. literary figure Washington Irving was so impressed by Bryant's talents that he helped broker a deal for the work to be published in England, where it met with favorable reception. The first full volume of Bryant's poetry, Poems, was published in the United States in 1821. Around 1823, he won a contract with the United States Literary Gazette to provide 100 lines of verse per month.