Background
Irwin Russell was the son of Dr. William McNab Russell, a native of Ohio but of Virginian extraction. While still young, Dr. Russell had established his practice in Port Gibson, Miss. , and there had married Elizabeth Allen, a native New Yorker of New England extraction, who had taught for several years in the Port Gibson Female College. Irwin was born in Port Gibson, but his family soon moved to St. Louis, whence, however, they returned to Port Gibson at the outbreak of the Civil War. Irwin, though always of frail physique, had early displayed precocity. At four he could read, and at six he could understand Milton's poetry. Food was scarce during the Civil War, and the growing boy was certainly undernourished. At the end of the war the family returned to St. Louis, where they remained till 1869.
Education
Irwin graduated with credit from St. Louis University. He then went to Port Gibson to study law in the office of Judge L. N. Baldwin.
Career
Russell was admitted to the bar at the age of nineteen by special act of the legislature of Mississippi. Meanwhile he had several times run away from his studies--once to New Orleans, and once to Texas with his chum Austin Wharton. While on these trips he lived in sailors' boarding houses and frequented Mississippi steamboats, with many of whose captains he was on terms of intimacy. He thus acquired an unusual penetration into human character and motives, but also a fondness for strong drink, which remained one of his besetting weaknesses.
In 1877 he became Judge Baldwin's assistant. He had always been more interested in literature than in the law, however, and had already produced considerable verse. His first poem, "A Chinese Tale, " a juvenile effort on the origin of foot-binding, appeared in 1869. "Ships from the Sea" received a great deal of attention locally when it was published in the Port Gibson Standard of October 13, 1871. One of the first of Russell's poems in Negro dialect, "Uncle Cap Interviewed, " appeared in January 1876 in the "Bric-. .. -Brac" department of Scribner's Monthly.
Many of his poems appeared in St. Nicholas, Appleton's Journal, Popular Science Monthly, Puck, and other periodicals. Much of his work was published anonymously or under various pen names. In 1878 an epidemic of yellow fever reached Port Gibson. Immediately there was an exodus from the town, but out of sixteen hundred people, between six and seven hundred remained. Dr. Russell stayed to tend the sick, and his son became his assistant. For several months they toiled night and day to alleviate the suffering.
In the latter part of December, Russell went to New York, where he was welcomed by such literary notables as Henry Cuyler Bunner, Richard Watson Gilder, and Robert Underwood Johnson, but despite the interesting book shops of the city and the literary life there, he did not find New York conducive to writing. In May 1879 his father died as a result of the exertions he had made during the epidemic, and there ensued a period of deep despair for the poet. In August, sick and practically penniless, he reached New Orleans, having worked his way down as a fireman. He soon secured a connection with the New Orleans Times, but the hardships he had undergone proved too much for his physique, and without appealing for aid from his friends or his family, he died in a cheap boarding house on December 23. With a premonition of death, not ten days before, he had published in the New Orleans Times his melancholy poem, "The Cemetery. " He is chiefly significant historically as a pioneer in the use of Negro dialect for literary purposes, but his was an authentic poetic voice even if a minor one.