Charles James Cannon

Background

Charles James Cannon was born on November 4, 1800 in New York City, New York, United States; the son of an Irishman from whom he inherited facile sentiment, deep melancholy, a religious nature, and a love of melodramatic romance.

Education

Presumably Cannon's education was scant, since he earned his livelihood as a clerk.

Career

A portrait, frontispiece to The Oath of Office (1854), reveals fine features and alert and quietly humorous eyes and mouth. Able to give to creative writing only the leisure hours of a work-a-day life, Cannon was conscious of the incompleteness of his training, and, although writing primarily for his own gratification, was sensitive to adverse critical opinion. His verse, much of which first appeared in minor periodicals of the day, was freely revised before publication in collected form. Facts, Feelings, and Fancies, his first book, appeared in 1835, a collection of poems and tales, the latter for the most part melodramatic and harrowing. One of them in a different vein, "Evert van Schaick, " he left unfinished as too obviously an imitation of Fitz-Greene Halleck's "Fanny. " The Poet's Quest and Other Poems followed in 1841. In addition to the title poem, the volume contains forty short poems, most of which were occasioned by the death of friends or acquaintances. Cannon is, in general, occupied with the sad retrospect of memory or the weary burden of life. In barely half a dozen poems do we find either a lighter or a more exalted strain. In 1843 a less somber collection, The Crowning Hour and other Poems, dealt chiefly, in the shorter poems, with religious themes. "The Crowning Hour" is a poetic version of Columbus's discovery of land; and "Love, " the other long poem of the volume, details a happy poet's quest, as a concession to the critics who had complained of the "Byronic moodiness" of the previous volume. In 1855, Ravellings from the Web of Life, over the pseudonym of "Grandfather Greenway, " was published, comprising six tales told by the members of a family group. A contemporary critic in Brownson's Quarterly found these tales more poetic than Cannon's poetry, saying that they displayed "nice observation, deep feeling, happy descriptive powers and now and then something of the witchery of romance. " The Oath of Office, a tragedy of unrelieved intensity, was produced at the Bowery Theatre on March 18, 1850, and was published in 1854. In characterization and power of feeling, this tragedy, the scene of which is laid in Ireland in the fifteenth century, is the best of Cannon's work. Its production, however, seems to have brought its author disappointment and bitterness, and he abandoned hope of staging his additional plays, contenting himself with their collection in two publications, Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous (1851) and Dramas (1857). The tragedies possess cumulative horror, rather than true dramatic quality, and have insufficient characterization or local color. Cannon was even less successful in his one comedy, "Better Late than Never" (Dramas), than in his tragedies. His verse, though touched with simple faith and feeling, has little originality of thought and imagery; yet it possesses an agreeable ease which enables it to rank with most transitory periodical verse. In addition to the volumes named above, Cannon's work included: Mora Carmodi; or, Woman's Influence, A Tale (1844); Scenes and Characters from the Comedy of Life, by the author of "Harry Layden" (1847); and, of uncertain date, Father Felix, a Catholic Story, and Tighe Lifford, a drama. By implication from the title of the 1847 publication, there should likewise be Harry Layden. Cannon is believed also to have compiled a Practical English Spelling Book (1852) and a series of readers.

Achievements

• Despite a hard road of personal hardships and lack of originality in the works, he was one of the first Irish-American authors, who wrote about people and problems around him.

Works

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  • The Oath of Office: A Tra (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Oath of Office: A Tra This day contract...)

  • The Poet's Quest, and Other Poems (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Poet's Quest, and Other Poems And there...)

  • Tighe Lyfford: A Novel (Classic Reprint)

    (Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, ...)

  • Bickerton

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The Crowning Hour, and Other Poems (Classic Reprint)

    (Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward. It ...)

  • Dramas (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Dramas Should make my name remembered. As i...)