Chivers, Thomas Holley

Chivers, Thomas Holley (1809–58), born in Georgia, early abandoned medicine for a career as author, publishing The Path of Sorrow (1832), poems about his unhappy first marriage; Conrad and Eudora (1834), a verse drama based on the Kentucky Tragedy; and Nacoochee (1837), which has a preface on the transcendental nature of poetry. He is principally known for his association with Poe (1840–49), although the two were never actually friends. Charges of plagiarism followed the publication of Chivers's Eonchs of Ruby (1851), to which he replied with counter charges, and critics believe that his previously published Isadore and other poems influenced the writing of The Raven and Ulalume. The title poem of The Lost Pleiad (1845) and To Allegra Florence in Heaven are elegies for his daughter, and after the death of three other children Chivers became increasingly interested in various mystical movements, writing a prose work on the Search After Truth; or, A New Revelation of the Psycho‐Physiological Nature of Man (1848). Several later volumes of poetry exhibit his sentimentality, lack of critical judgment, and finally his unbalanced mind.