author
William Vaughn Moody
1869–1910
A poet and playwright of unusual range, he moved from finely made lyric poems to ambitious dramas that helped carry American literature into a new century.
2 Audiobooks
The Faith Healer: A Play in Three Acts
by William Vaughn Moody
Gloucester Moors and Other Poems
by William Vaughn Moody
About the author
Born in Spencer, Indiana, on July 8, 1869, William Vaughn Moody grew up largely in New Albany after his family moved there. He studied at Harvard, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1893 and a master's degree in 1894, then taught English at Harvard before joining the University of Chicago faculty.
Moody built his reputation first as a poet, with work admired for its seriousness, musical language, and large moral and spiritual concerns. He is especially associated with poems such as Gloucester Moors and Ode in Time of Hesitation, and literary reference sources describe him as a writer whose work stood between late nineteenth-century traditions and newer twentieth-century forms.
He also turned to drama and found wide success with The Great Divide, while continuing to write plays and verse marked by high ambition and emotional intensity. His career was cut short by his death in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on October 17, 1910, and many readers and critics have seen in his small body of work the promise of an even larger achievement.