Background

Clinton was born on September 18, 1860 in Clinton, New York, United States, the son of James Isaac and Elizabeth (Stephens) Scollard.

Education

Scollard received his early education at Clinton Liberal Institute, and graduated from Hamilton College in 1881. He then taught at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute until February 1883, when, for his health, he visited Florida, Arizona, and California. A year later he received the degree of Master od arts from Hamilton, and in subsequent years he continued his graduate studies at Harvard - where he met Bliss Carman and Frank Dempster Sherman - and at Cambridge, England.

Career

In 1888 Scollard joined the faculty of Hamilton College as professor of English, continuing as such until 1896; during the year 1911-12 he acted in the same capacity. Scollard's devotion to literature is marked both by his work as a college professor and by the forty-odd books he published in his lifetime.

His first volume, Pictures in Song (1884), following a popular trend in American poetry, contained verse chiefly in the miniature forms, those of the French occupying a conspicuous place. A few years later he abandoned this style for the more vigorous "Vagabondia" note made popular by Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey, but, as with Carman, the spirit of the open road finally yielded to a more mystical view of Nature, which Scollard sought to interpret in its manifold relations to human life. His works: Songs of Sunrise Lands (1892) and Italy in Arms and Other Poems (1915) illustrate his absorbing interest in the Orient and in Italy.

His return to contemporary American life, however, is evinced in several volumes of lyrics inspired by the World War. Scollard's prose works include a number of romances of Renaissance Italy, a book of nature essays, and a volume of foreign travel sketches.

One of his most intimate friends was Frank Dempster Sherman, to whom he was drawn by a community of poetic and academic interests; A Southern Flight (1905), a volume of verse done in collaboration, was the chief literary product of this friendship. On Sherman's death in 1916, Scollard wrote Elegy in Autumn (1917), in which his friend is addressed as "brother in song, " and edited The Poems of Frank Dempster Sherman (copr. 1917), for which he composed an excellent critical introduction.

He died of heart disease at his home in Kent, Connecticut, United States.

Achievements

• Clinton Scollard was the professor of English literature at Hamilton College for nearly twenty years. Among his publications were forty-odd books, including: "Pictures in Song" (1884); "With Reed and Lyre" (1886); "Old and New World Lyrics" (1888); "Giovio and Gilulia" (1891); "Songs of Sunrise Lands" (1892) and others.

Works

More photos

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  • Lyrics from a Library

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Ballads of Valor and Victory; Being Stories in Song from the Annuals of America

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • A Boy's Book of Rhyme

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • The Lyric Bough

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Under summer skies, by Clinton Scollard. With illustrations by Margaret Landers Randolph

    (Book)

Views

A great admirer of Poe, Scollard found much that was best in life in dreams and visions, but he felt wistfully, too, the Platonic impermanence of our hopes and ideals. If Scollard caught some of Poe's dream-like quality, he retained, however, nothing of his gloom, for his poetry is significant for its courageous optimism.

Membership

Scollard was a member of a number of literary associations, including the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Connections

Scollard was twice married: first, in 1890, to Georgia Brown of Jackson, Michigan, by whom he had a daughter; they were divorced in 1924 and that same year he married Jessie B. Rittenhouse, the poet.

Father:

James Isaac Scollard

Mother:

Elizabeth (Stephens) Scollard

Spouse:

Georgia Brown of Jackson

Spouse:

Jessie B. Rittenhouse

Friend:

Frank Dempster Sherman

References

• Who’s Who In America, 1932-33, Vol. 17
• The younger American poets
• Who's Who In New York (city And State) 1929 Biography In Dictionary Form Of The Leaders In All Phases Of Life In The Metropolis And The Commonwealth Ninth Edition
• Our Poets of Today