Letters of a Traveller; Or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) was an American romantic poet, journalist, and editor. He developed an interest in poetry early in life. Under his father's tutelage, he emulated Alexander Pope and other Neo-Classic British poets. The Embargo, a savage attack on President Thomas Jefferson published in 1808, reflected Dr. Bryant's Federalist political views. He began to read law, but regenerated his passion for poetry through encounters with the English pre- Romantics and, particularly, William Wordsworth. His first collection of poems was published in 1821. Even so, it was not until 1832, when an expanded Poems was published in the U. S. and, with the assistance of Washington Irving, in Britain, that he won recognition as America's leading poet. In 1825, he was hired as editor, first of the New-York Review, then of the United States Review and Literary Gazette. He became Assistant Editor of the New-York Evening Post, a newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton that was surviving precariously. Other works include: The Fountain (1842), The White-Footed Deer (1844), Letters of a Traveller; or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America (1850) and The Little People of the Snow (1873).