When Stephen Vincent Benét died in 1943 at the age of 44, all of America mourned the loss. Benét was one of the country’s most well known poets of the first half of the twentieth century and as a fiction writer, he had an even larger audience.
This book is a collection of essays celebrating Benét and his writing. The first group of essays addresses Benét’s life, times, and personal relationships. Thomas Carr Benét reminisces about his father in the first essay, and others consider Benét’s marriage to his wife Rosemary; Archibald MacLeish, Thornton Wilder and Benét as friends, liberal humanists and public activists; and his friendships with Philip Barry, Jed Harris, and Thornton Wilder.
The second group contains essays about Benét’s poetry, fiction, and drama. They discuss Benét’s role in the development of historical poetry in America, John Brown’s Body and the Civil War, Hawthorne, Benét and historical fiction, Benét’s Faustian America, the adaptation of "The Devil and Daniel Webster" to drama and then to film, Benét’s use of fantasy and science fiction, and Benét as a dramatist for stage, screen and radio.
About the Author
Writer, researcher and teacher David Garrett Izzo is also the author of The Writings of Richard Stern: The Education of an Intellectual Everyman (2002). He lives in Douglassville, Pennsylvania. Lincoln Konkle is a professor at the College of New Jersey where he teaches American drama, modern drama, and creative writing. He lives in Ewing, New Jersey.
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