Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier , 1842-81, American poet and musician, b. Macon, Ga., grad. Oglethorpe College 1860. His first work, the novel Tiger-Lilies (1867), was based on his experiences as a Confederate soldier in the Civil War. An accomplished musician, Lanier was first flutist of the Peabody Orchestra, Baltimore, in 1873. Following his appointment as lecturer on English literature at Johns Hopkins, his study of the interrelation of music and poetry was published as The Science of English Verse (1880). His Poems appeared in 1887. Lanier's poetry is marked by its melodic verse and extravagant conceits. Among his best-known poems are "Corn," and "The Marshes of Glyn."

Bibliography: See Centennial edition of his works (ed. by C. R. Anderson et al., 10 vol., 1945); biography by A. H. Starke (1933, repr. 1964); studies by J. De Bellis (1972) and J. S. Gabin (1985).

Lanier, Sidney (1842–81), born in Macon, Ga., was educated at Oglethorpe University, where he early showed an inclination toward a musical career. Plans for further study were interrupted by his service in the Civil War and his four months' imprisonment at Point Lookout, Md. Seriously ill with consumption, and suffering from poverty, he said that in the eight years after his return in 1865 “pretty much the whole of life had been merely not dying.” His novel Tiger‐Lilies (1867), about his experiences in the Civil War, helped him to decide that he would not settle “down to be a third‐rate struggling lawyer for the balance of my little life.” Accordingly, he turned to the writing of poetry, published his Poems (1877), became a flutist in the Peabody Orchestra at Baltimore, and supplemented his small income by delivering lectures, which were posthumously published as Shakspere and His Forerunners (2 vols., 1902). These talks brought him the position of lecturer in English literature at Johns Hopkins in 1879, and the work for his classes resulted in The Science of English Verse (1880) and The English Novel (1883). In his book on prosody he illuminates his own method by his thesis that the laws governing music and verse are identical, and that time, not accent, is the important element in verse rhythms. Lanier's complete Poems were collected in 1884 and are noted for the ballads and lyrics that embody his attempt to produce in verse the sound patterns of music. His arrangements of lines and rhythms were frequently strained as well as novel, in both the emphasis on pattern‐making and the interest in metaphysical conceits, and the imagery is often vague as a result of the attention to musical quality. Nevertheless, the poet's theories were successfully practiced in some of his works, outstanding among which are “The Song of the Chattahoochee,” “The Symphony,” and “The Marshes of Glynn.” New editions of his Poems (1884) were issued with slight additions in 1891 and 1916. A full critical edition of his works was published in ten volumes (1945).