author
S. C. (Samuel C.) Mercer
Best known for a volume of verse preserved by Project Gutenberg, this little-documented poet wrote with a strong sense of memory, history, and feeling. His poems often look back at the Civil War era and the lives shaped by it.
1 Audiobook
Poems
by S. C. (Samuel C.) Mercer
About the author
S. C. (Samuel C.) Mercer is a public-domain poet whose work survives chiefly through the collection Poems. Reliable biographical information about him is very limited, and many modern catalog pages repeat only his name without offering sourced life details.
What can be confirmed from Poems is that Mercer wrote about love, grief, war, and remembrance, often with the American Civil War and its aftermath close in view. In the book's prefatory material, he also says that some pieces first appeared in the Nashville Press and Times, where he had served as editor during his terms as Tennessee's Public Printer in the Reconstruction era.
Because so little well-sourced information about his personal life is easily available online, Mercer is remembered mainly through the poems themselves rather than through a fully documented author biography.