Background

George Boker was born on October 6, 1823, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. He was descended from a Quaker family of Nottinghamshire, which had come to England, by way of Holland, from the French town of Nîmes, where the name had originally been Bocher. Charles Boker, father of the playwright, was a banker, who restored the Girard Bank to solvency after the panic of 1837. George Boker grew up among cultivated surroundings, in the Philadelphia which still preserved the Colonial tradition, social and architectural.

Education

Boker graduated from the College of New Jersey, as Princeton was then called, in 1842.

Career

Boker’s first volume of lyric and narrative verse, A Lesson of Life (1848), was only promising, but in Calaynos, published in the same year, he showed his power as a playwright. It is a blank verse tragedy, laid in Spain in medieval times, and based upon the Spanish horror of any taint of Moorish blood. Although Calaynos was written for the stage, Boker had to wait for foreign approval before he could secure a hearing from his own countrymen. Samuel Phelps produced Calaynos at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, in London, May 10, 1849, without the formality of asking Boker's consent. Encouraged by reports of the play's success, James E. Murdoch produced it at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, January 20, 1851, and it was later revived. But although Boker received overtures for his next play from managers here and abroad, Anne Boleyn (1850) never saw the stage. It was not as lofty in conception as Calaynos, or as charming as his romantic comedy, The Betrothal, which was first performed at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, September 25, 1850. A love story of medieval Italy, the characters were better drawn than is usual in romantic drama, and the verse showed Boker's usual distinction. It was produced at Drury Lane, September 19, 1853.

Boker next attempted a social satire, laid in England in 1851, in The World a Mask, which was put on at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, April 21, 1851. This play, which still remains in manuscript, was well received, but the mingled prose and verse have not the dignity of Boker's poetic drama. The Widow's Marriage, a comedy in blank verse, of the days of George II, was a much better play, but the inability of Marshall, the manager of the Walnut Street Theatre, to find an actress capable of portraying the leading character of Lady Goldstraw, prevented its performance.

Boker was widely read in the history of Spain and he found in the career of Leonor de Guzman, the mistress of Alphonso XII, a fine subject for a heroic tragedy. In Leonor de Guzman, which was written for Julia Dean, and first produced at the Walnut Street Theatre, October 3, 1853. The climax of Boker's achievement was his tragedy of Francesca da Rimini, first produced by E. L. Davenport at the Broadway Theatre, New York, September 26, 1855. For the first time in literature, the husband became the most appealing figure, and so skilfully did Boker blend history and tradition, so powerful was his interpretation of the Italian spirit of the thirteenth century in terms of passion, pride, and brotherly affection, that he produced the greatest piece of dramatic poetry written in the English language and presented on the professional stage during the nineteenth century. Compared with Boker's characters, vitally human either in love or hate, the creations of later writers in English seem pale and ineffective.

Boker was also a poet. In 1856 he collected his lyric and narrative verses and published them, together with Calaynos, Anne Boleyn, Leonor de Guzman, Francesca da Rimini, and The Widow's Marriage, in two volumes, entitled Plays and Poems, which have been five times reprinted. Among his lyrics, his sonnets are the most outstanding. He had a gift for the sonnet on public affairs, and those addressed to England, at the time of the Crimean War, were often reprinted during the World War as representative of his discriminating sympathy with Great Britain. His love sonnets, with their haunting beauty of phrase, gave him rank among American sonneteers second only to Longfellow. Seventy-seven sonnets were included in the Plays and Poems, but Boker wrote all together three hundred and fourteen. Some of these have only recently been brought to light.

During the years immediately following his father's death in 1857, Boker's attention was turned from poetry through his brave and successful legal fight to rescue Charles Boker's name from calumny and his property from seizure. It was not until 1873 that a final judgment was rendered, which established the fact that his father had saved, not wrecked, the Girard Bank. Boker paid his respects to the vilifiers of his father's memory in his Book of the Dead, written between 1858 and 1860 but not published until 1882.

Both as a poet and a citizen, Boker rendered sterling service to his country during the Civil War. Like all war poetry, his is uneven, varying from the ill-considered attack on McClellan, "Tardy George, " which he omitted when his Poems of the War were published in 1864, to his stirring "Black Regiment, " his touching "Dirge for a Soldier, " in memory of Gen. Philip Kearny, and his noble "Ode to America, " written in March 1862, when the cause of the Union seemed dark.

Boker was appointed minister to Turkey, November 3, 1871. Two treaties were negotiated by him, one securing for the first time recognition by the Ottoman Government that Turkish subjects, when naturalized according to American law, became American citizens, and the other referring to the extradition of criminals. With a capacity for detail, Boker also recognized the importance of dealing in a large way with the problems of diplomacy. When the Khedive of Egypt sought his aid in the establishment of judicial freedom from Turkish interference, Boker advised the United States Government at once to take a broad view of the request, but had the mortification of seeing his constant representations disregarded, while one by one the chief European nations took the proper steps. Boker's informal letters to Bayard Taylor reveal his sympathy with any nation that sought to respect itself, and his disappointment at being unsupported in his efforts to help Turkey in her desire to control her internal affairs without dictation from the powers of Europe embittered his stay in Constantinople. He disliked also the constant wrangles with the Turkish Government in which, however, he seems to have been unvaryingly successful. He welcomed, therefore, the promotion implied in his appointment as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Russia, leaving Constantinople on May 4, 1875, and presenting his credentials to Alexander II in St. Petersburg on July 24. But the administration of Hayes was unfriendly to Boker and despite the intimation from Alexander II that his continuance in office would be most agreeable to the Czar, Boker was recalled in January 1878.

His return was a signal for Philadelphia to bestow such honors upon him as the presidency of the Union League and of the Philadelphia Club. In 1886 he became president of the Fairmount Park Commission and devoted his attention to the beautifying of the park system, remaining in the office until his death. The impulse to write, which had been checked by the lack of appreciation of his work, was renewed by the success of the revival of Francesca da Rimini by Lawrence Barrett in 1882.

Boker had written Nydia in 1885 for Barrett, a blank verse tragedy which owes its central situation to Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii, but which is entirely original in language and in feeling. The play was not produced, and Boker re-wrote it under the title Glaucus in 1886, probably to give Barrett a more definitely leading part. It is evident from the manuscripts that Boker was preparing a revised edition of his works, but illness prevented his completion of the project. His death on January 2, 1890, at his home in Philadelphia, from disease of the heart, brought forth renewed interest in his poetry and led to the publication of the fifth edition of his Poems and Plays and the reprinting of his Poems of the War.

Achievements

• George Boker devoted much of his life to writing poetry and producing plays. He published the work "The Lessons of Life, and other Poems" (1848), and produced a number of well received plays the most famous of which was "Francesca da Rimini" (1853). Boker also achieved success serving as secretary of the Union League from 1863 to 1871. Being it's driving force Boker promoted the cause of Union, patriotism, financial and material support for the United States Sanitation Commission, and the encouragement of men to enlist in the defense of the Union. He used his writing skills to further the Union cause during the war, publishing the work "Poems of the War" in 1864.

Works

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  • Francesca da Rimini a Tragedy

    (This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)

  • Poems of the War

    (Poems of the War is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of...)

  • Plays and Poems

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Anne Boleyn: A Tragedy

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • Plays: The bethrothal; The widow's marriage.-Poems

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • Calaynos: A Tragedy

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini
  • Hunting Trips on the Prairie and in the Mountains - Hunting Trips of a Ranchman - Part II

Politics

Boker had been a Democrat, but when Fort Sumter fell, he recognized that there could be no question of divided allegiance. Knowing how close and intricate were the social and economic relations between Philadelphia and the South, he took an active part, in November 1862, in the foundation of the Union Club, which became on December 27 the Union League of Philadelphia, the first in the country. Boker was its first secretary and devoted a large share of his time to the organization of its activities. The services of the Union League in raising money, in encouraging enlistment, and in combating the more subtle social influences which disturbed Philadelphia during the earlier days of the Civil War were directed by Boker, and he remained secretary until 1871.

Personality

Boker was tall, and long enjoyed the reputation of being "the handsomest man in Philadelphia. " But, from his early days at college until his death, he guarded the privacy of his own emotions so well that his personality cannot be transferred to the printed page. It is only in the unguarded letters to Taylor that we discover the disappointment of the high-minded gentleman, who longed to devote his life to poetry, which his countrymen did not appreciate, or to playwriting, which the circumstances of the American theatre made hazardous, or to the service of his country, to which the sordid politics of the day put an end.

Connections

In 1844 Boker was married to Julia Mandeville Riggs of Georgetown, District of Columbia.

Father:

Charles Boker

Spouse:

Julia Mandeville (Riggs) Boker

Son:

George Boker

References

• The Theatrical Life of George Henry Boker (Artists and Issues in the Theatre)