Nathaniel Parker Willis..

Nathaniel Parker Willis (January 20, 1806 – January 20, 1867), also known as N. P. Willis,[1] was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. For a time, he was the employer of former slave and future writer Harriet Jacobs. His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis and his sister Sara wrote under the name Fanny Fern.

Born in Portland, Maine, Willis came from a family of publishers. His grandfather Nathaniel Willis owned newspapers in Massachusetts and Virginia, and his father Nathaniel Willis was the founder of Youth's Companion, the first newspaper specifically for children. Willis graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover in 1823, going on to Yale, where he developed an interest in literature and began publishing poetry. After graduation, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the New York Mirror. He eventually moved to New York and began to build his literary reputation. Working with multiple publications, he was earning about $100 per article and between $5,000[2] and $10,000 per year.[3] In 1846, he started his own publication, the Home Journal, which was eventually renamed Town & Country. Shortly after, Willis moved to a home on the Hudson River where he lived a semi-retired life until his death in 1867.

Willis embedded his own personality into his writing and addressed his readers personally, specifically in his travel writings, so that his reputation was built in part because of his character. Critics, including his sister in her novel Ruth Hall, occasionally described him as being effeminate and Europeanized. Willis also published several poems, tales, and a play. Despite his intense popularity for a time, at his death Willis was nearly forgotten.

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Tonight, I was introduced to a poet that I have never heard of called N.P. Willis who lived quite close to me now..

I have not yet read his poetry and yet he lived within times of Indians killing Europeans within the Hudson Valley that is close to New York City..

Therefore, you and I will enter this earlier world of the struggle for existence within an unknown land called America..

Was this Poet a Mystic?..

This answer, we shall find quickly through his words..


-thomas