Stephen Vincent Benét (July 22, 1898 – March 13, 1943) was an American author, poet, short story writer and novelist. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body and for two short stories, The Devil and Daniel Webster and By the Waters of Babylon.
Easton Press Stephen Vincent Benét books
John Brown's Body - Library of Famous Editions - 1994
Franklin Library Stephen Vincent Benét books
Thirteen O'Clock Stories of Several Worlds - Collected Stories of the World's Greatest Writers - 1982
John Brown's Body - Pulitzer Prize Classics - 1986
John Brown's Body - Greatest Books of the World's Greatest Writers (imitation leather) - 1986
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Stephen Vincent Benét biography
Benét was born into an Army family in Pennsylvania. His father and namesake lead the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps, 1874 - 1891, with the rank of Brigadier General.
Benet spent most of his boyhood in Benicia, California. At the age of about ten, Benét was sent to the Hitchcock Military Academy. A graduate of The Albany Academy in Albany, New York and Yale University, where he was "the power behind the Yale Lit", according to Thornton Wilder, a fellow member of the Elizabethan Club. Benet published his book at age 17. He was awarded an M.A. in English upon submission of his third volume of poetry in lieu of a thesis.
Benet help solidify the place of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition and the Yale University Press during his decade-long judgeship of the competition.[2]Benet published the first volumes of James Agee, Muriel Rukeyser, Jeremy Ingalls, and Margaret Walker.
Benet's fantasy short story, The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937), won an O. Henry Award. He furnished the material for Scratch, a one-act opera by Douglas Moore. The story was filmed in 1941 and shown originally under the title All That Money Can Buy. Benét also wrote a sequel, Daniel Webster and the Sea Serpent, in which real-life historic figure Webster encounters the Leviathan of biblical legend.
Benét maintained a home (commonly referred to as Benét House), in Augusta, Georgia. Part of Augusta College (now Augusta State University) it was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1971.
Benét died of a heart attack in New York City at the age of 44. He was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for Western Star, an unfinished narrative poem on the settling of America.
It was a line of Benet's poetry that gave the title to Dee Brown's famous history of the destruction of Native American tribes by the United States, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
He also adapted the Roman myth of the rape of the Sabine Women into the story, The Sobbin' Women, which in turn was adapted into the movie musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
John Brown's Body was staged on Broadway in 1953, in a three-person dramatic reading featuring Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson, and Raymond Massey, and directed by Charles Laughton.
Benet fathered three children. His brother, William Rose Benét, was a poet, anthologist and critic who is largely remembered for his desk reference, Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia (1948).
Death
Benét died of a heart attack in New York City, on March 13, 1943, at the age of 44 and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Stonington, Connecticut, where he had owned the historic Amos Palmer House. On April 17, 1943, NBC broadcast a special tribute to the life and works of Benét, which included a performance by Helen Hayes. He was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for Western Star, an unfinished narrative poem on the settling of the United States.
The title of Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a history of Native Americans in the American West in the late nineteenth century, is taken from the final phrase of Benét's poem "American Names". The full quotation, "I shall not be there/I shall rise and pass/Bury my heart at Wounded Knee," appears at the beginning of Brown's book. Benet's poem is not about the plight of Native Americans, and Benet would have been unlikely to approve of the author's tendentious approach. Wounded Knee, a village on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota, was the location of the last major confrontation between the U.S. Army and Native Americans. The event is known formally as the Wounded Knee Massacre, as more than 150 Sioux men, women, and children who were largely unarmed were killed that day.
He adapted the Roman myth of the rape of the Sabine Women into the story "The Sobbin' Women". It was adapted as the movie musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
His play John Brown's Body was staged on Broadway in 1953, in a three-person dramatic reading featuring Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson, and Raymond Massey, and directed by Charles Laughton. The book of the same name was included in Life Magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944.
Benét fathered three children: Thomas, Stephanie, and Rachel. His brother, William Rose Benét, was a poet, anthologist and critic who is largely remembered for his desk reference Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia (1948). His sister Laura Benét was also an author.
Stephen Vincent Benét quotes
"Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways."
"Truth is a hard deer to hunt. If you eat too much truth at once, you might die of the truth."
"Dreaming men are haunted men."
"Honesty is as rare as a man without self-pity."
"Books are not men and yet they are alive, they are man's memory and his aspiration, the link between his present and his past, the tools he builds with."
Stephen Vincent Benét books in order
Five Men and Pompey, a series of dramatic portraits, Poetry, 1915
The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun (Yale University Prize Poem), 1917
Young Adventure: A book of Poems, 1918
Heavens and Earth, 1920
The Beginnings of Wisdom: A Novel, 1921
Young People's Pride: A Novel, 1922
Jean Huguenot: A Novel, 1923
The Ballad of William Sycamore: A Poem, 1923
King David: A two-hundred-line ballad in six parts, 1923
Nerves, 1924 (A play, with John Farrar)
That Awful Mrs. Eaton, 1924 (A play, with John Farrar)
Tiger Joy: A Book of Poems, 1925
The Mountain Whippoorwill: How Hill-Billy Jim Won the Great Fiddler's Prize: A Poem., 1925
Spanish Bayonet, 1926
John Brown's Body, 1928
The Barefoot Saint: A Short Story, 1929
The Litter of Rose Leaves: A Short Story, 1930
Abraham Lincoln, 1930 (screenplay with Gerrit Lloyd)
Ballads and Poems, 1915–1930, 1931
A Book of Americans, 1933 (with Rosemary Carr Benét, his wife)
James Shore's Daughter: A Novel, 1934
The Burning City, 1936
The Magic of Poetry and the Poet's Art, 1936
By the Waters of Babylon, 1937
The Headless Horseman: one-act play, 1937
Thirteen O'Clock, 1937
Johnny Pye and the Fool Killer: A Short Story, 1938
Tales Before Midnight: Collection of Short Stories, 1939
The Ballad of the Duke's Mercy, 1939
Elementals, 1940–41 (broadcast)
Freedom's Hard-Bought Thing, 1941 (broadcast)
Listen to the People, 1941
A Summons to the Free, 1941
Cheers for Miss Bishop, 1941 (screenplay with Adelaide Heilbron, Sheridan Gibney)
Selected Works, 1942
Short Stories, 1942
Nightmare at Noon: Short Poem, 1942 (in The Treasury Star Parade, ed. by William A. Bacher)
A Child is Born, 1942 (broadcast)
They Burned the Books, 1942
Published posthumously
Western Star, 1943 (unfinished)
Twenty Five Short Stories, 1943
America, 1944
O'Halloran's Luck and Other Short Stories, 1944
We Stand United, 1945 (radio scripts)
The Bishop's Beggar, 1946
The Last Circle, 1946
Selected Stories, 1947
From the Earth to the Moon, 1958
Source and additional information: Stephen Vincent Benét