James Russell Lowell was a versatile American author of the 19th century known for poems and essays as well as for his work as a prominent magazine editor. Lowell's writing and editing exerted influence in the political sphere, and he spent time working as a diplomat.

In the years before the Civil War, Lowell became known for writing anti-slavery poems and for combining an abolitionist viewpoint with witty political satire.

Early Life

James Russell Lowell was born February 22, 1819, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, a Unitarian minister, had attended Harvard, as had his grandfather. The youngest of six children, James grew up in comfortable circumstances and attended Harvard himself.

During his time at Harvard he developed a reputation for neglecting his studies. And though he had written the graduation oration for his class in 1838, he was suspended before he could deliver it. He did receive a degree, however, and then planned to become a lawyer.

After obtaining a degree from Harvard Law School he practiced law for less than a year before deciding to pursue a literary career. He published some volumes of poetry, and just as magazines were becoming influential in America, he began to edit his own magazine, the Pioneer.

Lowell's magazine did not last long, but it did have one distinction: he solicited stories from writers, and published Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart."

Political Writings

In the 1840s Lowell began writing verses from the point of view of a New England character named Hosea Biglow.

The writings put out as utterances from Biglow were generally satires against government policies Lowell opposed. Lowell, like other New Englanders, viewed the war against Mexico and the annexation of Texas as little more than attempts to spread slavery westward.

The Biglow poems were a success, and were collected in a book in 1848, The Biglow Papers.

In 1848 Lowell also published a book of satirical verses targeted at American writers, A Fable for Critics. The most famous couplet in it outraged Poe: "There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge/Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge..."

A Fable for Critics became popular and established Lowell's reputation as a wry critic of American literature.

Refuge In Reading and Writing

Lowell had married and he and his wife began a family when tragedy seemed to haunt him. In the late 1840s and early 1850s three of their four children died, and then Lowell's wife died. Distraught, he devoted himself to raising his remaining daughter. And he became somewhat reclusive for a time, staying in his studying and reading for 12-hour stretches.

Lowell was offered a professorship at Harvard, and spent a year in Europe, educating himself to prepare to teach. He joined the Harvard faculty, and in 1857 he helped found the Atlantic Monthly. As the nation moved closer to Civil War and the issue of slavery split American society, Lowell became the magazine's first editor.

During the Civil War Lowell stepped down from editing the Atlantic Monthly, though he continued to contribute poems and essays. At the war's end he delivered an oration honoring the Harvard students and graduates who had perished fighting in the war.

Politics and Diplomacy

In 1876 Lowell was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. And the winner of that year's disputed election, Rutherford B. Hayes, appointed Lowell as an American diplomat in Spain. After serving in that post for three years, Lowell was named American minister to England.

Lowell returned to America in 1885 and fell into the role of America's foremost man of letters. He often gave orations, which were collected in popular books.

He died on August 12, 1891, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His death was front-page news in the New York Times, and he was mourned as a prominent American literary figure.