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Vanauken, Sheldon (1914–1996)
Sheldon Vanauken was a poet and novelist best known for his memoir A Severe Mercy (1977), about converting to Christianity and his wife's unexpected death at age forty. A less famous sequel, Under the...
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Belitt, Ben (1911–2003)
Ben Belitt was an American poet and translator born in New York City and educated at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He was a professor of comparative literature for fifty years at...
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Poetry Society of Virginia
The Poetry Society of Virginia was founded in May 1923 in Williamsburg, Virginia, at the suggestion of Dr. C. E. Feidelsohn, a faculty member of the College of William and Mary. Its purpose is the...
View ArticleBryan, Daniel (ca. 1789–1866)
Daniel Bryan was a poet, a lawyer, and a member of the Senate of Virginia (1818–1820) representing Rockingham and Shenandoah counties. Publishing his works in periodicals and short books, he wrote in a...
View ArticleCooke, Philip Pendleton (1816–1850)
Philip Pendleton Cooke was a poet whose work emphasized lost love, the natural world, and exoticism, placing him firmly within the romantic literary movement. Cooke practiced law in western Virginia...
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Moore, Virginia (1903–1993)
Virginia Moore was a poet, biographer, and scholar. She is perhaps best known for her work Virginia Is a State of Mind (1942), which has been described as the "biography of a state." In it, she...
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Burial of Latané, The
The Burial of Latané was one of the most famous Lost Cause images of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Painted by Virginian William D. Washington in Richmond in 1864, the work shows white women,...
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Tiernan, Mary Spear (1836–1891)
Mary Spear Tiernan was a novelist, essayist, and occasional poet who wrote primarily about central Virginia before and during the American Civil War (1861–1865). She published three novels, as well as...
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Roberts, Ruby Altizer (1907–2004)
Ruby Altizer Roberts is the author of two collections of poetry, three memoirs, a children's book, and a genealogy. She was named Virginia's first female poet laureate in 1950 and, until 1994, was the...
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Spencer, Anne (1882–1975)
Anne Spencer was a poet, a civil rights activist, a teacher, a librarian, and a gardener. While fewer than thirty of her poems were published in her lifetime, she was an important figure of the black...
View Article"Upon Sejanus" by William Strachey (1604)
The following is a prefatory sonnet, contributed by William Strachey, to a 1604 publication of Ben Jonson's Sejanus His Fall, a play first performed at the Globe in 1603 by William Shakespeare and his...
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Taylor, Eleanor Ross (1920–2011)
Eleanor Ross Taylor was a poet, short-fiction author, and literary critic. An award-winning writer, she was born in North Carolina but has spent the last several decades working and publishing from...
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Bolling, Robert (1738–1775)
Robert Bolling was a poet, a member of the House of Burgesses (1761–1765), the sheriff of Buckingham County, and a member of the county court (1761–1775). Trained as a lawyer, he nearly fought a duel...
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Raleigh, Sir Walter (ca. 1552–1618)
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English soldier, explorer, poet, and courtier who funded three voyages to Roanoke Island (1584–1587) and whose ostentatious manner of dress and love for Queen Elizabeth became...
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Dos Passos, John (1896–1970)
John Dos Passos was a novelist, poet, critic, and painter whose mother was born in Virginia. He came of age traveling through Europe and, after graduating from Harvard University in 1916, served as an...
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"Elegy" by Robert Bolling (1775)
On May 20, 1775, the Virginia Gazette published "Elegy," a long poem by Robert Bolling, on the deaths of Virginia militiamen at the Battle of Point Pleasant (October 10, 1774) during Dunmore's War...
View Article"Mr Strachie's Harke" by William Strachey
Toward the end of his life, while living in London in poverty, William Strachey wrote poetry on the subject of death, the following three verses of which survive. Strachey had previously served as...
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Bacon's Death and "Bacons Epitaph"; an excerpt from "The History of Bacon's...
In this excerpt of "The History of Bacon's and Ingram's Rebellion, 1676," the likely author, John Cotton, describes the death of Nathaniel Bacon, whose rebellion against Governor Sir William Berkeley...
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Brock, Sarah Ann (1831–1911)
Sarah Ann Brock, a writer who often published under the pseudonym Virginia Madison, published numerous editorials, historical articles, reviews, essays, letters, travel sketches, short stories,...
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Commendatory Verse by Walter Raleigh (1576)
This poem by Sir Walter Raleigh was his first to be published. It was included as a commendatory verse at the beginning of the satire The Steele Glas (1576) by the influential English poet, soldier,...
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"A Vision Upon this Concept of the Faery Queene" by Sir Walter Raleigh (1590)
This sonnet, "A Vision Upon this Concept of the Faery Queene," was written by Sir Walter Raleigh and published as a commendatory verse at the beginning of Edmund Spenser's epic The Faerie Queen (1590)....
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"The Conclusion" by Sir Walter Raleigh (1618)
This poem by Sir Walter Raleigh, "The Conclusion," is thought to be a revision of an earlier verse by him. The changes, believed to have been made shortly before his execution on October 29, 1618, are...
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"The Lie" (ca. 1590s)
"The Lie," by Sir Walter Raleigh, was likely composed in the 1590s, after falling out with his beloved Queen Elizabeth. Raleigh secretly married one of Elizabeth's Maids-of-Honor on November 19, 1591,...
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Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–1849)
Edgar Allan Poe was a poet, short story writer, editor, and critic. Credited by many scholars as the inventor of the detective genre in fiction, he was a master at using elements of mystery,...
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Shenandoah
Shenandoah is a literary journal published three times a year by Washington and Lee University in Lexington. Founded in 1950 by J. J. Donovan, D. C. G. Kerry, and Tom Wolfe, the journal publishes...
View Article"Uncle Gabriel"
In this African American song, "Uncle Gabriel," the singer tells the story of Gabriel's Conspiracy, an attempted uprising of slaves in Henrico County in August 1800. One of the chief conspirators, an...
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Edmunds, Abe Craddock (1899–1959)
Abe Craddock Edmunds published to critical acclaim a number of long poems, often on historical themes, but has since been largely forgotten. After attending Randolph-Macon College and then earning a...
View Article"Our massa Jefferson he say" by Anonymous (September 1, 1802)
The following poem first appeared on July 10, 1802, in the Port Folio, a Federalist literary paper published in Philadelphia. The version below was reprinted in the Richmond Recorder on September 1,...
View ArticleEdmunds, Murrell (1898–1981)
Murrell Edmunds was a poet, novelist, and playwright best known for his biting irony and his strident defense of African Americans during the Jim Crow era, when legislation in Virginia and throughout...
View Article"To Sleep" by St. George Tucker (January 24, 1788)
In "To Sleep," written on January 24, 1788, St. George Tucker mourns the death of his wife, Frances Bland Randolph Tucker, who died on January 18.Fri, 15 Aug 2014 16:18:06 EST
View Article"Parody" by St. George Tucker (March 20, 1781)
In "Parody," written on March 20, 1781, St. George Tucker satires a victory proclamation issued by the British general Charles Cornwallis after the Battle of Guilford Court House, fought on March 15....
View Article"Resignation" by St. George Tucker (March 21, 1807)
In "Resignation," written on March 21, 1807, St. George Tucker contemplates getting older.Fri, 15 Aug 2014 16:21:10 EST
View Article"To Atlas" by St. George Tucker (June 5, 1793)
In "To Atlas," published in the National Gazette in Philadelphia on June 5, 1793, St. George Tucker satires Alexander Hamilton, then the U.S. secretary of the treasury. Tucker's poem was the second in...
View ArticleThe Legend of Captaine Jones by David Lloyd (1631)
The Legend of Captaine Jones, a poem attributed to David Lloyd (1597–1663) and first published in 1631, satirizes the legend of Captain John Smith, one of the first English settlers at Jamestown. A...
View ArticleDavis, D. Webster (1862–1913)
D. Webster Davis was a teacher, poet, and lecturer in Richmond and Manchester. Born into slavery, Davis became a teacher in 1879, working in Richmond public schools for thirty-three years. In 1896 he...
View ArticleEnclosure: Poem by Phillis Wheatley (October 26, 1775)
Phillis Wheatley wrote the following poem and enclosed it in a prefatory letter to George Washington, dated October 26, 1775. Washington sent the letter and poem to Joseph Reed, who later arranged to...
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