Background
James McHenry was born on December 20, 1785 at Larne, County Antrim, Ireland.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0548629196/?tag=2022091-20
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1164283731/?tag=2022091-20
James McHenry was born on December 20, 1785 at Larne, County Antrim, Ireland.
McHenry studied first for the Presbyterian ministry, but being disinclined to the pulpit because he was a hunchback he became a student of medicine at Belfast and later at Glasgow.
For some years after his certification, McHenry practised medicine in his native town of Larne and Belfast; but in 1817, with his wife and infant son, he emigrated to the United States, living in Baltimore, Butler County, Pennsylvania, and in Pittsburgh until 1824 when he settled in Philadelphia. In that city for eighteen years he was prominent as a physician, merchant, political leader, magazine editor, poet, and critic. With the assistance of his wife he established and kept a draper's shop near his home at 36 Second Street: in addition to this he very soon met with some success in professional and literary circles. As early as 1822, while in Pittsburgh, he had brought out a volume of miscellaneous verse, The Pleasures of Friendship, and a year later his first exclusively American work, Waltham, a poetic legend of Revolutionary days. About the same time, his first novel, written under the pseudonym of Solomon Secondsight, was published in London. The Wilderness; or The Youthful Days of Washington (1823), is an account of the adventures of Protestant Ulstermen in America during the Revolutionary days of the West. In 1824, McHenry began his brief career as an editor when he founded the American Monthly Magazine as a Philadelphia rival of the North American Review. This magazine, devoted to criticism, essays, poetry, and social satire, failed within its first year for reasons principally financial. He had already published his second novel, The Spectre of the Forest (1823), to be followed in 1824 by O'Halloran, or the Insurgent Chief, and in 1825 by The Hearts of Steel, an Irish historical tale. In 1827, he undertook to launch his sole venture in the dramatic field, The Usurper, a tragedy of Druidical times in blank verse and interesting as having been the first attempt to place Irish legendary history upon the American stage. The Usurper appeared at the Chestnut Street Theatre December 26, 1827, but was received without enthusiasm. McHenry now turned again to novel writing, producing American historical tales of which The Betrothed of Wyoming (1830) and Meredith, or the Mystery of Meschianza (1831) are types. In the meantime the success of his earliest and perhaps his best work, The Pleasures of Friendship, which had reached a seventh edition in 1836, led McHenry, whose views upon poetry were highly conservative, to attack Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, and other romanticists of their respective schools in the most unmeasured terms.
As leading poetry reviewer for the American Quarterly Review, he was led by his bias into extravagances so effectively rebutted by writers for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and the Athenæum as to discredit him as a critic. He now turned once more to prose fiction and verse. Ambitious like Pope, to whom he has been not very happily likened, he attempted an epic and in 1839 published Antediluvians, or the World Destroyed, a blank verse chronicle of the Flood. It was scathingly reviewed in Blackwood's (July 1839). In 1843 he was appointed to the consulate in Londonderry. He assumed his duties and after two years in office died in his native town of Larne.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
Sensitive and deeply impressionable, McHenry turned to poetry and wrote many lyrics to celebrate the valley of the Larne and the blue Scottish hills. Undoubtedly he was at his best with the Irish lyric. For all his many talents, his sole contribution to American letters was his portraiture of the Ulster Irishman who in conduct, beliefs, and religious tenets resembles the lowland Scot.
James was married to Jane McHenry.