{\b John Greenleaf Whittier}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 1807

{\b Date of Death}.: 1892

{\b Works}.

Legends of New England in Prose and Verse (1831), Moll Pitcher (1832), Poems 
Written During the Progress of the Abolition Question (1838), Lays of My Home 
and Other Poems (1843), Voices of Freedom (1846), Songs of Labour (1850), The 
Panorama and Other Poems (1856), Home Ballads, Poems and Lyrics (1860), Snow 
Bound (1866), Miriam and Other Poems (1871).

{\b Featured Works}.

'Ichabod', 'At Last', 'The Waiting', 'The Henchman', 'Telling the Bees', 'The 
Eternal Goodness', 'Barbara Frietchie', 'Maud Muller', 'Poem to a Volume of 
Poems'.

{\b General Comment}.

John Whittier was born into a Quaker family and raised on a farm at East 
Haverhill Massachusetts. Although he had a limited formal education, Whittier 
was an enthusiastic reader from an early age. Whilst still young he absorbed 
the style of Robert Burns. Whittier's first poems were published by Lloyd 
Garrison, in The Liberator, a newspaper committed to the overthrow of slavery. 
Garrison became a friend and helped Whittier gain an editorial job with a 
Boston newspaper. Although Whittier's journalistic career was set to succeed, 
his Quaker roots and Garrisons influence pulled him towards politics. He 
became involved in the anti-slavery cause and in 1835 he became elected to the 
Massachusetts legislature. Whittier continued to write in support of the 
abolition of slavery throughout the civil war. When the conflict ended he 
returned to the countryside of New England and there achieved some of his best 
work. The most famous of Whittier's work is Snowbound, a piece which is said 
to be a masterpiece of nineteenth-century poetry. In his later life Whittier 
made a great contribution to Hymnology.