author
Joel Benton
1832–1911
A 19th-century American man of letters, he moved easily between poetry, essays, biography, and lectures. His work shows a strong interest in literary lives, especially figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe.
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About the author
Born in Amenia, New York, in 1832, Joel Benton was an American writer, poet, and lecturer. He spent part of his career in education and became known as a versatile literary figure whose work ranged beyond verse into criticism, biography, and journalism.
Benton wrote books including Emerson as a Poet, In the Poe Circle, Greeley on Lincoln, and The Life of Phineas T. Barnum. That mix of subjects gives a good sense of his interests: he was drawn to major American personalities and to the literary culture surrounding them.
He died in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1911. Though not as widely read today as some of the authors he wrote about, he remains a useful window into 19th-century American literary life and its fascination with public thinkers, poets, and reformers.