Lowell, James Russell 1819-91
US poet, essayist and diplomat

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard in 1838. In 1843 he helped to edit The Pioneer, with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe and John Whittier as contributors, and in 1845 he published his Conversations on the Old Poets. At the outbreak of war with Mexico (1846), he wrote a satiric poem in the Yankee dialect, out of which grew the Biglow Papers (1848). Many serious poems, written about 1848, formed a volume, and A Fable for Critics (1848) is a series of witty sketches of US authors. He visited Europe (1851-52), and in 1855 he was appointed Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at Harvard, later returning to Europe to finish his studies. He edited the Atlantic Monthly from 1857, and with Charles Eliot Norton the North American Review (1863-67). His prose writings include Among my Books (1870) and My Study Windows (1871). The second series of Biglow Papers appeared during the Civil War, in 1867. An ardent abolitionist, he gave himself unreservedly to the cause of freedom. He was appointed US Minister to Spain in 1877, and was transferred in 1880 to Great Britain, where he remained until 1885.

Bibliography: H E Scudder, James Russell Lowell (2 vols, 1901)