Stephen Vincent Benet, American author. Awarded gold medal by Roosevelt Memorial Assn; awarded Pulitzer Prize for Verse). Member Alpha Delta Phi, Chi Delta Theta, Wolf’s Head, American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Background
American poet, short-story writer, and novelist, who wrote the great Civil War epic John Brown's Body, was born in Bethlehem, Pa., on July 22, 1898. Son of James Walker (colonel United States Army) and Frances Neill (Rose) Benet. He was the youngest child of Frances Neill BenétBenet and Colonel James Walker Benét,Benet, a career Army officer, graduate of West Point, and the grandson of Brigadier General Stephen Vincent Benét.Benet. The influence upon the younger Stephen Vincent BenétBenet of his father and of the military tradition can be seen in both his character and his work.
BenétBenet graduated from Yale University in 1919. He returned to Yale for graduate study after service in the State Department during World War I, was awarded an M.A. in 1920, and spent the following year in Paris writing poetry and fiction.BenétBenet died on Mar. 13, 1943, in New York, his health destroyed by months of labor on radio scripts and writing assignments for the war effort. For a definitive biography of Benét,Benet, see Charles A. Fenton's Stephen Vincent Benét:Benet: The Life and Times of an American Man of Letters (1958).
Education
Bachelor of Arts, Yale, 1919, Master of Arts, 1920, Doctor of Letters, 1937.
Career
His precocious talent had already been displayed in the skillful dramatic monologues of Five Men and Pompey (1915), written when he was only 17, and in two successive volumes of verse, published while he was a Yale undergraduate. In 1921 he divided the Poetry Society prize with Carl Sandburg and attracted notice with a timely novel, The Beginning of Wisdom.
On Nov. 26, 1921, BenétBenet and Rosemary Carr, a talented writer from Chicago, were married. Benét'sBenet's marriage was the major richness of his adult life, even more meaningful to him than his many literary successes. During the 1920's BenétBenet turned increasingly to magazine fiction to support his growing family. In time he mastered the medium and gave new dimensions of fantasy and national history to the stale formulas of commercial fiction. His The Devil and Daniel Webster (1936) has remained one of the most widely read American short stories, just as his two long narrative poems, John Brown's Body (1928) and Western Star (1943), have been revered by successive generations of American readers.
Works
novel
The Beginning of Wisdom
poem
John Brown's Body (1928)
Other Work
Five Men and Pompey (1915)
The Devil and Daniel Webster (1936)
Western Star (1943)
Membership
Member Alpha Delta Phi, Chi Delta Theta, Wolf’s Head, American Academy of Arts and Letters. Clubs: Elizabethan (New Haven, Connecticut).
Connections
Married Rosemary Carr, November 26, 1921. Children: Stephanie Jane, Thomas Carr, Rachel.