Mitchell S. (Mitchell Starrett) Buck

Born in 1887 and active in the early 20th century, Mitchell S. Buck was an American poet, translator, and classical scholar. Reference sources consistently describe his writing as deeply shaped by 1890s aestheticism and by Greek and Roman literature.

His books show that mix of scholarship and literary style clearly. He published works such as Syrinx: Pastels of Hellas and Ephemera, translated texts including The Songs of Bilitis, and also wrote Book Repair and Restoration, a practical manual for bibliophiles that remained notable enough to be preserved and recirculated by Project Gutenberg.

Buck died in 1959. Read today, he stands out as a writer with unusually broad interests: part poet, part translator, part classicist, and part lover of the physical book itself.