Richard Hovey

Born in Normal, Illinois, in 1864, Richard Hovey grew up to become an American poet, dramatist, and translator. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1885, where he became closely associated with campus literary life and later wrote "Men of Dartmouth," the school's alma mater.

Hovey is especially remembered for his collaboration with the Canadian poet Bliss Carman on the Songs from Vagabondia books, lively poems that celebrate freedom, comradeship, and the open road. He also wrote Arthurian verse dramas and other poetry that mixed romantic feeling with a strong sense of music and performance.

His career was active but brief: he lectured, wrote steadily, and built a reputation as part of the literary world of the 1890s before dying in New York in 1900 at just thirty-five. Even so, his best-known poems have kept his name alive, especially among readers drawn to spirited verse and late nineteenth-century American literary culture.