author
Sidney Lanier
1842–1881
A poet and musician from Georgia, he wrote verse that seems to sing on the page. His life was marked by war, illness, and an intense love of music, all of which shaped his distinctive voice.
6 Audiobooks
The Poems of Sidney Lanier
by Sidney Lanier
Knightly Legends of Wales; or, The Boy's Mabinogion Being the Earliest Welsh Tales of King Arthur in the Famous Red Book of Hergest
by Sidney Lanier
Select Poems of Sidney Lanier
by Sidney Lanier
Poem Outlines
by Sidney Lanier
The English Novel and the Principle of its Development
by Sidney Lanier
Bob: The Story of Our Mocking-bird
by Sidney Lanier
About the author
Born in Macon, Georgia, in 1842, Sidney Lanier grew up surrounded by books and developed an early passion for music. He studied at Oglethorpe College, served in the Confederate army during the Civil War, and was later imprisoned while working on a blockade-running ship. The imprisonment damaged his health, and tuberculosis troubled him for much of the rest of his life.
Lanier became known as both a poet and a skilled flutist, and his writing is often noted for its musical movement and sound. He spent part of his later career in Baltimore, where he played with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra and also taught literature at Johns Hopkins University. Poems such as The Song of the Chattahoochee helped make him one of the best-known Southern literary voices of the nineteenth century.
He died in 1881 at just thirty-nine, but his work continued to attract readers interested in the meeting point of poetry, rhythm, and the natural world. His life was brief, yet it left behind a body of writing that feels both thoughtful and deeply heard.