John Inman

Background

John was born in 1805 in Utica, New York, United States, the son of William and Sarah Inman. About 1812 William Inman removed with his family to New York City.

Education

John had no adequate formal education.

Career

Toward the close of 1823, Inman went to North Carolina, where he taught school for two years. After spending a year in Europe, he returned to New York and from 1829 to 1833 practised law. But owing either to a small clientele, he gradually drifted into journalistic work.

From 1828 to 1831, and later in 1835 and 1836, Inman served on the editorial staff of the New York Mirror, a literary magazine founded in 1823 by George P. Morris. For a short time in 1828 he seems also to have had an editorial charge in the New York Standard. About 1837 he accepted a more important appointment as an assistant editor of the Commercial Advertiser, and with the death of William L. Stone, the editor-in-chief, in 1844, assumed its complete editorial control, which he retained until shortly before his death.

With the establishment in 1844 of the Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, Inman was appointed editor of the periodical, later having as an associate Robert A. West. This periodical was fortunate in numbering among its contributors such writers as H. T. Tuckerman, Mrs. Lydia Sigourney, and Edgar Allan Poe. Duyckinck asserts that Inman himself on one occasion wrote an entire number of the periodical. Inman's connection with the magazine ceased in 1848.

"Old Graham the Beggar, " in The Christian Souvenir (Boston, 1843), is his feeble, sentimental effusion in a purely didactic vein. Of slightly greater artistic merit is "The Sudden and Sharp Doom, " a story published in The Gift for 1843 (1842), which also included the first printing of Poe's "Pit and the Pendulum. " In "Early Love and Constancy" (1831) Inman presents a sentimental tale, tempered, in the early Knickerbocker manner, by elements of burlesque.

Inman also wrote for an edition of Samuel Maunder's Treasury of History, published in New York in 1845, a sketch of American history.

He died in 1850.

Achievements

• John Inman was the editor-in-chief of the Commercial Advertiser for many years. He was also for a time a contributor to the Spirit of the Times and the New York Review. Thus Inman's life was largely spent in the obscurity of editorial offices, where he passed an anonymous literary existence. Although, he was the author of the popular edition of Samuel Maunder's Treasury of History.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Treasury of History: Being a History of the World: Comprising a General History Both Ancient and Modern of All the Principal Nations of the Globe ...; Volume 2

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

Membership

Inman belonged to the "Sketch Club, " which included among its members Bryant, Halleck, and Verplanck.

Personality

Inman had a love of literature, inherited, perhaps, from his father, who was a gentleman of education and culture. Although greatly overshadowed in reputation by his more accomplished brother, Henry Inman, 1801-1846, the painter, he yet seems to have been liked by his contemporaries.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Halleck, " says J. G. Wilson, "esteemed Inman highly as a genial companion and an accomplished litterateur. "

Connections

In 1833 Inman married Miss Fisher, the sister of several comedians of that name popular at the Park Theatre.

Father:

William Inman

Mother:

Sarah Inman

Brother:

Henry Inman

associate:

Robert A. West

References

• Cyclopaedia of American Literature, by E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck