Posts Tagged ‘Coastal Life’
Plath, Sylvia
by Claire J. Keyes (2000) PLATH, SYLVIA (1932-1963). Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, and her family moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts, a seaside suburb, in 1936, where she lived until they moved inland to Wellesley in 1942. Her childhood by the Atlantic was significant in developing her nautical consciousness, and she makes many references to the…
Read MorePhelps, Elizabeth
by Mira Dock (2000) PHELPS ELIZABETH [STUART] (1844-1911). Growing up in Andover, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Phelps was a lifelong resident of New England and had a summer home in Gloucester. She was a staunch feminist who participated in causes that ranged from temperance to conditions of factory workers. Though the main theme in her fifty-seven books is…
Read MorePercival, James Gates
by Bernard F. Engel (2000) PERCIVAL, JAMES GATES (1795-1856). Though he often mentioned the ocean in his poetry, James Gates Percival made little use of direct observation. As state geologist for Connecticut, he mapped the landforms along the Atlantic and Long Island Sound. But in verse he seldom drew on this knowledge. He followed instead the…
Read MoreSafina, Carl
by Rachel Earnhardt (2017) SAFINA, CARL (1955-). Carl Safina is a biologist, author, activist, and educator. Born on May 23, 1955, in Brooklyn, NY, Safina spent his childhood fishing, breeding pigeons, and playing music. In high school, he participated in a bird-banding survey on Fire Island, a barrier island off Long Island, an experience he…
Read MoreStowe, Harriet Beecher
by Margherita M. Desy (2000) STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER (1811-1896). Harriet Beecher Stowe is internationally famous for her antislavery best-seller Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). In the summer of 1852, still living in Brunswick, Maine, where she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe began her romantic Maine idyll The Pearl of Orr’s Island (1862). The first half of The…
Read MoreRichard, Mark
by Hugh Egan (2000) RICHARD, MARK (1955- ). Author of the sea novel Fishboy (1993), Mark Richard (pronounced ree-SHARD) has been, at different times in his life, disc jockey, newspaperman, photographer, and private investigator. As a young man, Richard took time off from his study of journalism at Washington and Lee University to work on fishing…
Read MoreOlson, Toby
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) OLSON, [MERLE THEODORE] TOBY (1937- ). Poet and novelist Toby Olson was born in Berwyn, Illinois, but spent much of his childhood moving around the United States. This constant movement instilled a theme of travel into his work, particularly his novels. He spent four years as a medical corpsman in the…
Read MoreOliver, Mary
by Ted Olson (2000, rev. ed. 2019) OLIVER, MARY (1935-2019). A popular and highly acclaimed American poet, recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Mary Oliver composed numerous lyric poems set on coastal Cape Cod. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Oliver began writing poems when a teenager. After briefly attending Ohio State University,…
Read MoreOgilvie, Elisabeth
by Brian Anderson (2000) OGILVIE, ELISABETH [MAY] (1917-2006). Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and soon thereafter uprooted to Maine, Elisabeth Ogilvie gained critical and popular attention for her first novel, High Tide at Noon (1944). The novel and its sequels, Storm Tide (1945) and The Ebbing Tide (1947), centered on the Bennetts, a family presiding over a…
Read MoreNelson, Marilyn
by Kelly Bushnell and Christian Loriel Lucas (2022) NELSON (WANIEK), MARILYN (1946—). Poet and translator Marilyn Nelson (Waniek) was born in Cleveland in 1946. She received her BA from the University of California, Davis, her MA from the University of Pennsylvania, and her PhD from the University of Minnesota. She is Professor Emerita at the…
Read MoreMoore, Ruth
by Tina M. Aronis (2000) MOORE, RUTH (1903-1989). Ruth Moore was born on Gott’s Island, Maine, where she lived for thirteen years before moving to the mainland to continue her education. She graduated from New York State College for Teachers in 1925 but did not pursue a teaching career. She worked for a time in New…
Read MoreMartin, William
by Susan Raidy Klein MARTIN, WILLIAM (1950- ). History and the sea are the subjects of the fiction of William Martin, contemporary novelist and screenwriter. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and earning a B.A. from Harvard University (1972) and an M.F.A. from the University of Southern California (1976), Martin has spent much of his life on…
Read MoreLowell, Robert, Jr.
by Sally C. Hoople (2000) LOWELL, ROBERT, JR [TRAILL SPENCE]. (1917-1977). Robert Lowell, the son of a naval officer, recalled in the poem, “Commander Lowell: 1887-1950” (Life Studies, 1959) how his father, in his postnaval life, would boom “Anchors Aweigh” in the bathtub and would frequent the Sunday Yacht Club and the Maritime Museum at Salem,…
Read MoreLincoln, Joseph Crosby
by Susan Raidy Klein (2000) LINCOLN, JOSEPH C[ROSBY]. (1870-1944). Joseph C. Lincoln, the descendant of a long line of a seafarers, was a prolific author of best-selling verses, stories, and novels that portrayed life along the shore of Cape Cod with nostalgia and humor. The son of Captain Joseph and Emily (Crosby) Lincoln, the author was…
Read MoreLe Guin, Ursula K.
by Dennis Berthold (2000) LE GUIN, URSULA K[ROEBER]. (1929-2018). Born in Berkeley, California, Ursula K. Le Guin earned her B.A. at Radcliffe College in 1951 and her M.A. in French and Renaissance literature at Columbia University in 1952. Author of over fifty books of fiction, short stories, poetry, and criticism, she is usually considered a children’s…
Read MoreLarcom, Lucy
by Thomas R. Brooks (2000) LARCOM, LUCY (1824-1893). Lucy Larcom was a prolific and highly regarded writer of descriptive and religious verse, short fiction, and inspirational prose in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born on the Massachusetts North Shore in Beverly, she lived and worked as a young girl in the Lowell mills, taught…
Read MoreKing, Stephen
by Richard J. King (2000) KING, STEPHEN [EDWIN] (1947- ). Although Stephen King sets much of his best-selling fiction in Maine, the New England coastal state of his birth and residence, he rarely writes about the sea. King has written dozens of horror, fantasy, and science fiction novels, novellas, short stories, and screenplays, including Carrie (1974;…
Read MoreKincaid, Jamaica
by Olivia Raymond (2022) KINCAID, JAMAICA (1949 – ). Jamaica Kincaid is an award-winning author and essayist of Caribbean descent. Born Elaine Potter Richardson in St. John’s on the island of Antigua, she moved to the United States in 1965 at the age of sixteen to work as an au pair, later attending Franconia College. In…
Read MoreJudson, Edward Zane Carroll (“Ned Buntline”)
by Margarita Rigal-Aragon (2000) [JUDSON, EDWARD ZANE CARROLL], “NED BUNTLINE” (1823-1886). Edward Zane Carroll Judson, better known by his pseudonym Ned Buntline, was born on the Atlantic coast in Stamford, New York. The family moved to Bethany, Pennsylvania, and then to Philadelphia about the time Judson was a teenager. The docks of this port impressed…
Read MoreKenney, Susan
by Mira Dock (2000) KENNEY, SUSAN [McILVAINE] (1941- ). Born in Summit, New Jersey, Susan Kenney teaches at Colby College and has written two works with nautical themes: Sailing (1989) and One Fell Sloop (1990). Both are based on her experiences steering boats and her apprehension about sailing. Sailing follows middle-aged Sara and Phil Boyd in…
Read MoreHowe, Tina
by David R. Pellegrini (2000) HOWE, TINA (1937- ). Obie-award-winning playwright Tina Howe often employs sea imagery as metaphoric devices in her plays. Born in Boston and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, Howe began to have her works professionally produced in the early 1970s; her plays often reflect her love of the New England seashore. For…
Read MoreHerne, James A.
by Attilio Favorini (2000) HERNE, JAMES A[HERN]. (1839-1901). James A. Herne was an actor, manager, and playwright whose early reputation as a successful melodramatist was established on the basis of his collaborations with playwright/producer/director David Belasco. Later in his career, however, he made a transition to a more realistic style, winning the approval of William Dean…
Read MoreHawthorne, Nathaniel
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL (1804-1864). Born in Salem, Massachusetts, when the town was still one of the most active seaports in America, Nathaniel Hawthorne spent most of his youth within sight of the town’s busy wharves. His grandfather, Daniel, had been a shipmaster and achieved minor distinction as a privateer during the Revolutionary…
Read MoreEliot, T. S.
by Matthew D. Childs (2000) ELIOT, T[HOMAS]. S[TEARNS]. (1888-1965). T. S. Eliot, perhaps the greatest poet of the twentieth century, was born on the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri. Educated at Harvard, the Sorbonne, and Oxford, he became a British subject in 1927 and received the Nobel Prize in literature in…
Read MoreDavis, Rebecca Harding
by Daniel W. Lane (2000) DAVIS, REBECCA HARDING (1830-1910). Although best known for her gritty depiction of factory life in her story “Life in the Iron-Mills” (1861), Rebecca Harding Davis frequently used vivid sea imagery in her writings. Intimately familiar with marshes, sand dunes, shipwreck legends, and the moods of the sea through summers spent…
Read MoreCrane, Stephen
by Matthew Evertson (2000) CRANE, STEPHEN (1871-1900). Stephen Crane’s first extended trip at sea ended in a shipwreck less than thirty-five hours after he left the Florida coast, forcing Crane and three other crew members to struggle toward land for almost thirty hours, crammed into a small dinghy, inches removed from the rough and chilly…
Read MoreCooper, James Fenimore
by Thomas Philbrick (2000) COOPER, JAMES FENIMORE (1789-1851). With The Pilot (1824) James Fenimore Cooper invented the sea novel, for the first time employing the dominant literary form of the nineteenth century as the vehicle for a fiction in which the sea and the ship provide the principal settings, and seamen become the chief characters. In…
Read MoreCoomer, Joe
by Jeffrey Cass (2000) COOMER, JOE (1958- ). A transplanted Texan, Joe Coomer married into a boating family and has spent a great deal of time off the Maine coast becoming adept at sailing. In 1992 Coomer purchased a wooden motor boat and recounted his adventures in his journal, Sailing in a Spoonful of Water: A…
Read MoreClampitt, Amy
by Richard Dey (2014) AMY CLAMPITT (1920–1994). Born and raised on a small farm in Iowa, this poet, who was best known for her highly cultured work, wrote a few extraordinary sea poems. Here are lines from the first: …
Read MoreChopin, Kate
by Elizabeth Schultz (2000)CHOPIN, KATE [O’FLAHERTY] (1850-1904). Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Kate Chopin had no experience of the sea until her three-month European honeymoon in 1870. On her return to the United States, she moved with her husband to the coastal city of New Orleans, the setting of her best-known novel, The Awakening (1899). Like Chopin’s…
Read MoreCheever, John
by Robert Imes (2000) CHEEVER, JOHN (1912-1982). John Cheever, a writer of predominantly short fiction, uses seaside cottages and beaches as backgrounds for many of his stories. Sometimes Cheever’s depiction of the sea is more significant, however, with references to the sea possessing curative, erotic, and even redemptive powers. A belief in the spiritually curative…
Read MoreBishop, Elizabeth
by Hugh Egan (2000) BISHOP, ELIZABETH (1911-1979). Elizabeth Bishop, American poet for whom the coastlines of North and South America served as powerful sources of inspiration, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father died when she was eight months old, and her mother, after suffering mental breakdowns, was permanently institutionalized by the time Bishop was…
Read MoreBeston, Henry
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) BESTON [SHEAHAN], HENRY (1888-1968). Born Henry Boston Sheahan in Quincy, Massachusetts, Henry Beston is the author of about a dozen books, including The Outermost House. A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod (1928). In 1925 Beston built a two-room cottage on the dunes in Eastham about twenty feet from…
Read MoreAverill, Charles
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) AVERILL, CHARLES (1825?-1868). Charles Averill wrote around a dozen adventure and romance novels between 1847 and 1850, about half of which take place wholly or mostly at sea. The Pirates of Cape Ann (1848) is representative. Here, “Paul Perril, the Pirate,” scourge of postcolonial Cape Ann, Massachusetts, is estranged from his family…
Read MoreAldrich, Thomas Bailey
by Frank Rotsaert (2000) ALDRICH, THOMAS BAILEY (1836-1907). Thomas Bailey Aldrich, known chiefly as the author of The Story of a Bad Boy (1869), edited Every Saturday (1866-1874) and The Atlantic Monthly (1881-1890) and also wrote poems, short stories, and five novels. Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Aldrich lived for brief periods in the seaports of New York and New Orleans,…
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