Background
Campbell was born on September 28, 1867, in Pomeroy, Ohio. He died of pneumonia on January 26,1896, while visiting family in Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio.
Campbell was born on September 28, 1867, in Pomeroy, Ohio. He died of pneumonia on January 26,1896, while visiting family in Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio.
He attended public schools in Pomeroy and wrote regularly for daily newspapers in Chicago in the 1880s and 1890s.
According to James Weldon Johnson, there is little known about Campbell"s early life, which he kept shielded even from his closest associates. Campbell participated in a group publication, the Four O"Clock Magazine, a literary magazine that was quite popular for a time. In 1891, Campbell married Mary Lewis Champ, in Harrison County, Ohio.
Mary Lewis Champ-Campbell graduated from Oberlin College in 1890, and was also a poet in her own right.
J. Edwin Campbell served as the first president of West Virginia Colored Institute (now West Virginia State University) from 1892–1894. Campbell"s wife, Mary Champ-Campbell, was appointed as Instructor of Vocal Music and Drawing in 1892.
In 1887, he published Driftings and Gleanings a standard English volume of poetry and essays. He is best known for his work Echoes from the Cabin and Elsewhere, a volume of poetry.
Many of his poems are written in the dialect of his subjects or the vernacular of the time, as well as standard English.
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