Henry Timrod, a Biography
Cisco, Willilam Brian
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (2004)
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9781611472905
.This is the first complete and thoroughly researched study of the poetOs life. Though often neglected today, South Carolinian Henry Timrod (1828-1867) ranks with Poe and Lanier as the finest of nineteenth-century Southern poets. Walter Brian Cisco succeeds in writing a balanced account of the life of Henry Timrod, the poet laureate of the wartime South. In one hundred and twenty pages of narrative, Cisco captures the heart and soul of Timrod, a poet who wrote poignantly of his native region and the struggle of the Confederacy to survive as a nation. Timrod’s poetry is interspersed throughout the text, and Cisco informs his readers of the context and background of each literary creation.
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Henry Timrod (December 8, 1828 – October 7, 1867) was an American poet, often called the poet laureate of the Confederacy


His father was an officer in the Seminole Wars and a poet himself.

With the outbreak of American Civil War, Henry returned to Charleston, soon publishing his best-known poems, which drew many young men to enlist in the service of the Confederacy. His best-known poems of the time are "Ethnogenesis", "A Cry to Arms", "Carolina" and "Katie." He was a frequent contributor of poems to Russell's Magazine and to The Southern Literary Messenger.

Timrod soon followed into the military as a private in Company B, 20th South Carolina Infantry name=, but illness prevented much service, and he was sent home. After the bloody Battle of Shiloh, he tried again to live the camp life as a western war correspondent for the Charleston Mercury, but this too was short lived as he was not strong enough for the rugged task.

He returned from the front and settled in Columbia, South Carolina, to become associate editor of the newspaper, The South Carolinian. In February 1864 he married his beloved Katie, and they soon had a son, Willie, born on Christmas Eve. During the occupation by General Sherman's troops in February 1865, he was forced into hiding, and the newspaper office was destroyed.
[edit]Death

The aftermath of war brought his family poverty and to him, increasing illness. He took a post as correspondent for a new newspaper based in Charleston, The Carolinian, but after several months of work he was never paid and the paper folded. His son Willie soon died, and Henry was to join him in death, of consumption, in 1867. He is interred in the churchyard at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbia.