William Wallace

1819 (age 62)

He is said also to have lived in Bloomington, Ind. His first printed poem was The Battle of Tippecanoe (Cincinnati, 1837). He returned to Lexington to study law, and practised his profession in New York City from 1841 until his death. He was twice married and had three children, a daughter by his first wife, and a son and daughter by his second. His second wife was a Miss Riker, whom he is said to have married in October 1856 (New York Times, post). During the first two decades of his residence in New York Wallace seems to have been more occupied with literature than with legal affairs. He became a frequent contributor to Harper's Magazine and Harper's Weekly, Godey's Lady's Book, the New York Ledger, the Celtic Monthly, the Journal of Commerce, and the Louisville Daily Journal, and his bestknown lyrics, odes, and love songs were collected as Meditations in America, and Other Poems (1851). A longer work, Alban the Pirate (1848), a poetical romance "intended to illustrate the influence of certain prejudices of society and principles of law upon individual character and destiny", met with little success. The outbreak of the Civil War stirred Wallace to write a number of fervently patriotic songs, among them "The Sword of Bunker Hill" and "Keep Step with the Music of the Union" (1861) and "The Liberty Bell" (1862), which were set to music and became widely popular. After the war he seems to have published little or nothing. He moved on terms of easy intimacy with such local "literati" as Samuel Woodworth, George P. Morris, and Thomas Dunn English, and was a close friend of Edgar Allan Poe after the latter's return to New York in 1844. He was responsible for inducing Poe to have his daguerreotype taken by M. B. Brady in 1848. After Poe's death he defended his memory against the aspersions of John Neal. He is said to have been "not unlike Poe in both temperament and habits. He was not a little like him in physique--in brightness of the eye, and in a superb courtliness of manner. He had the same, or a similar, irresolute will; but he was a delightful companion to meet if you met him at the right time". William Cullen Bryant commended Wallace for his "splendor of imagination" and "affluence of poetic diction, " George D. Prentice pronounced him "the greatest lyrical poet of the country, " and Poe, taking Wallace as his text, vigorously belabored the New England group for their failure to recognize any merit but their own (The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, post). Nevertheless only a few of Wallace's poems, and those chiefly his militant patriotic songs, have survived as anthology pieces. Though everyone knows "And the hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world, " the name of the writer is seldom connected with the familiar quotation. The lyrics that were praised by contemporaries for their general resemblance to the poetry of Shelley and Keats have been forgotten by posterity for the same reason.

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Meditations In America: And Other Poems (1851)

(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Meditations in America, and Other Poems

(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

The battle of Tippecanoe, triumphs of science, and other poems.

(Title: The battle of Tippecanoe, triumphs of science, and...)

Title: The battle of Tippecanoe, triumphs of science, and other poems. Author: William Ross Wallace Publisher: Gale, Sabin Americana Description: Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more. Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more. Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ SourceLibrary: Huntington Library DocumentID: SABCP03610600 CollectionID: CTRG01-B1371 PublicationDate: 18370101 SourceBibCitation: Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to America Notes: P. 9-10 contain correspondence relating to the work's publication, the last letter being signed by the author, "William Wallace." Collation: 105 p. ; 19 cm

Patriotic and Heroic Eloquence: A Book for the Patriot, Statesman, and Student (Classic Reprint)

(Excerpt from Patriotic and Heroic Eloquence: A Book for t...)

The Loved And The Lost (1856)

(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Wordsworth: A Poem

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

Prattsville: An American Poem...

(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

William Ross Wallace

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Background

William Ross Wallace was born probably in Lexington or in Paris, Ky. He is said to have been the son of a Presbyterian minister and was presumably of the Highland Scotch stock of the Pennsylvania and Virginia frontier.