约翰·格林利夫·惠蒂尔传记

诗人的传记

约翰·格林里夫·惠蒂尔于1807年12月17日出生在马萨诸塞州哈弗希尔附近的农村宅基地，父母是约翰和阿比盖尔(赫西)。他在农场长大，家里有父母、一个兄弟和两个姐妹、一个姑姑和一个叔叔，农场经常有访客和雇工。他们的农场不怎么赚钱。钱只够维持生活。约翰本人不适合干繁重的农活，他一生都身体不好，体弱多病。虽然他没有受过什么正规教育，但他是一个狂热的读者，他研究了他父亲关于贵格会的六本书，直到它们的教义成为他意识形态的基础。惠蒂尔深受其宗教教义的影响，尤其是其对人道主义、同情和社会责任的强调。惠蒂尔第一次接触诗歌是由一位老师介绍的。他的妹妹未经他的允许，将他的第一首诗《流亡者的离去》寄给了纽伯里波特自由出版社，其编辑威廉·劳埃德·加里森于1826年6月8日发表了这首诗。当惠蒂尔还是个孩子的时候，人们发现他是色盲，因为他无法分辨成熟和未成熟的草莓。 Garrison as well as another local editor encouraged Whittier to attend the recently-opened Haverhill Academy. To raise money to attend the school, Whittier became a shoemaker for a time, and a deal was made to pay part of his tuition with food from the family farm. Before his second term, he earned money to cover tuition by serving as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in what is now Merrimac, Massachusetts. He attended Haverhill Academy from 1827 to 1828 and completed a high school education in only two terms. Garrison gave Whittier the job of editor of the National Philanthropist, a Boston-based temperance weekly. Shortly after a change in management, Garrison reassigned him as editor of the weekly American Manufacturer in Boston. Whittier became an out-spoken critic of President Andrew Jackson, and by 1830 was editor of the prominent New England Weekly Review in Hartford, Connecticut, the most influential Whig journal in New England. In 1833 he published The Song of the Vermonters, 1779, which he had anonymously inserted in The New England Magazine. The poem was erroneously attributed to Ethan Allen for nearly sixty years. One of his most enduring works, Snow-Bound, was first published in 1866. Whittier was surprised by its financial success, earning some $10,000 from the first edition. In 1867, Whittier asked James Thomas Fields to get him a ticket to a reading by Charles Dickens during the British author's visit to the United States. After the event, he wrote a letter describing his experience: My eyes ached all next day from the intensity of my gazing. I do not think his voice naturally particularly fine, but he uses it with great effect. He has wonderful dramatic power... I like him better than any public reader I have ever before heard. Whittier spent the last few winters of his life, from 1876 to 1892, at Oak Knoll, the home of his cousins in Danvers, Massachusetts. Whittier died on September 7, 1892, at a friend's home in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. He is buried in Amesbury, Massachusetts.