editor lawyer politician satirist
Robert W. Wright was born on February 22, 1816, in Ludlow, Vermont, the third son of Stephen Wright and Zibiah Richardson. His father, a cooper, was fifth in descent from Edward Wright, who emigrated from Bromwick, Warwickshire, England, and settled in Concord, Massachussets, about 1650.
Having been graduated in the class of 1842 from Yale, Wright taught for three years in the public schools of Boston while he studied in a law office.
He was admitted to the Suffolk bar, in Boston, in 1845 and almost immediately moved westward to the territory of Wisconsin, where he practised law for ten years, most of the time at Waukesha. During this period he edited Practical Legal Forms (1852). In 1856 he quitted the West and settled in Waterbury, Connecticut, where, though he still practised law for a time, he entered upon the journalistic career which was to occupy him chiefly for the rest of his life. Until he retired in 1877 he was successively editor of the Waterbury Journal, the Hartford Daily Post, the New Haven Daily News, the New York Daily News, the New Haven Daily Lever, the Daily State Journal of Richmond, Virginia, and the New Haven Daily Register. He also worked actively in political affairs. For three years he was secretary to James E. English. For the presidential election of 1880, he wrote a series of acidulous lyrics to popular music, known as The Hancock and English Campaign Song Book for 1880. From his youth he dabbled in literature. In 1864 he published, under the name "Horatius Flaccus, " The Church Knaviad, or Horace in West Haven, and in 1867, under the name "Quevedo Redivivus, Jr. ," The Vision of Judgment, or The South Church: Ecclesiastical Councils. Viewed from Celestial and Satanic Stand-points, two biting satires based on a local clerical dispute arising over loyalty to the Union cause. In 1871, in imitation of Bret Harte's poem on the "Heathen Chinee, " he published under the name "U. Bet, " The Pious Tchi-Neh, a pasquinade on the Connecticut gubernatorial election of that year. Though Wright's poetry was often brilliant in its imitation of satiric verse forms, his reputation as an American satirist has suffered from the parochialism of his subjects. Had he turned to national events, he might well have gained a national reputation. He was probably best known, nationally, for his anti-Darwinian study, Life; Its True Genesis (1880), in which he developed a variation of the vitalistic explanation. The book appeared late in the controversy and, though widely reviewed by the religious and secular press, was ignored by the leading controversialists, and can be said to have had no real influence. At the time of his death, Wright was engaged in writing a continuation of this work, which he called Biodynamics. Robert William Wright died on January 9, 1885, in Cleveland, Ohio.
From the time he lived in Wisconsin Robert W. Wright was an ardent Whig, and when this party broke up he transferred his uncompromising partisanship to the Democrats.
On August 13, 1844, Robert W. Wright married Laurine Louise Luke, by whom he had five children. On October 14, 1852, he married Sarah Louise Martyn, by whom he had three children.
