With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
1898 – 1943
Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for ‘John Brown’s Body,’ a long narrative poem which interweaves historical and fictional characters to relate important events in the Civil War, from the raid on Harper’s Ferry to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Benét was an important judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, serving from 1933 to 1943 and enhancing the reputation of the prize.
- Biography/Description of Work
Stephen Vincent Benét attended Yale University where he published two collections of poetry, ‘Five Men and Pompey’ (1915) and ‘The Drug-Shop ‘(1917). His studies were interrupted by a year of civilian military service; he worked as a cipher-clerk in the same department as James Thurber. He graduated in 1919, submitting his third volume of poems in place of a thesis. He published his first novel ‘The Beginning of Wisdom’ in 1921. Benét then moved to France to continue his studies at the Sorbonne and returned to the United States in 1923 with his new wife, the writer Rosemary Carr. In Stonington he was part of James Merrill’s intellectual circle. His work often shared some Modernist sensibilities such as American vernacular subjects, but was otherwise traditional. During his lifetime, Benét received a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, the O. Henry Story Prize, the Roosevelt Medal, and a second Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for a posthumously-published an epic poem based on American history.
- Sources view
- Lehman, Eric D. and Amy Nawrocki. 2014 Literary Connecticut. Charleston: The History Press.
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