Joseph Kirkland

Last updated
Joseph Kirkland, 1884 Joseph Kirkland.jpg
Joseph Kirkland, 1884

Joseph Kirkland (January 7, 1830 - April 29, 1894) [1] was an American novelist. Born in Geneva, New York, to educator William Kirkland and author Caroline Kirkland, he was a businessman in Chicago, then served in the Union Army during the Civil War, reaching the rank of major. He resigned his Union Army commission and moved to Tilton, Illinois, where he married Theodosia B. Wilkinson in 1863. In 1864 he founded the Midwestern literary periodical Prairie Chicken. [2] After the war he became a lawyer while also pursuing writing. He is best remembered as the author of two realistic novels of pioneer life in the Far West, Zury: The Meanest Man in Spring County (1887) and The McVeys. Other works are The Captain of Company K and The Story of Chicago. He was also the literary editor of the Chicago Tribune . Kirkland died in Chicago at the age of 64.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis Pharcellus Church</span> American publisher and editor

Francis Pharcellus Church was an American publisher and editor. Born in Rochester, New York, he graduated from Columbia University and embarked on a career in journalism. With his brother, William Conant Church, Francis founded and edited several periodicals: The Army and Navy Journal, The Galaxy, and the Internal Revenue Record and Customs Journal. He was a war correspondent for The New York Times during the American Civil War. He worked at The New York Sun in the early 1860s and again from 1874 till his death, writing thousands of editorials.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1894.

The Irish Literary Revival was a flowering of Irish literary talent in the late 19th and early 20th century. It includes works of poetry, music, art, and literature.

Edward William Garnett was an English writer, critic and literary editor, who was instrumental in the publication of D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Gilmore Simms</span> American writer and politician (1806–1870)

William Gilmore Simms was a poet, novelist, politician and historian from the American South. His writings achieved great prominence during the 19th century, with Edgar Allan Poe pronouncing him the best novelist America had ever produced. He is still known among literary scholars as a major force in antebellum Southern literature. He is also remembered for his strong support of slavery and for his opposition to Uncle Tom's Cabin, in response to which he wrote reviews and a pro-slavery novel. During his literary career he served as editor of several journals and newspapers and he also served in the South Carolina House of Representatives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin Balmer</span> American novelist

Edwin Balmer was an American science fiction and mystery writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline Kirkland</span> American writer

Caroline Mathilda Stansbury Kirkland was an American writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Gold</span> American writer

Michael Gold was the pen-name of Jewish American writer Itzok Isaac Granich. A lifelong communist, Gold was a novelist and literary critic. His semi-autobiographical novel Jews without Money (1930) was a bestseller. During the 1930s and 1940s, Gold was considered the preeminent author and editor of U.S. proletarian literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Jacobs</span> Australian folklorist, historian and writer (1854–1916)

Joseph Jacobs was a New South Welsh-born British-Jewish folklorist, translator, literary critic, social scientist, historian and writer of English literature who became a notable collector and publisher of English folklore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Grant Wilson</span> American novelist

James Grant Wilson was an American editor, author, bookseller and publisher, who founded the Chicago Record in 1857, the first literary paper in that region. During the American Civil War, he served as a colonel in the Union Army. In recognition of his service, in 1867, he was nominated and confirmed for appointment as a brevet brigadier general of volunteers to rank from March 13, 1865. He settled in New York, where he edited biographies and histories, was a public speaker, and served as president of the Society of American Authors and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis Fisher Browne</span> American journalist

Francis Fisher Browne was an American editor, poet, and literary critic. Browne was one of the founders and later, an honorary member of the Chicago Literary Club, the Caxton Club (Chicago) and The Twilight Club of Pasadena (California). He served as the Chairman of Committee on Congress at the World's Congress Auxiliary of the Columbian Exhibition, in the summer of 1893.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Floyd Dell</span> American editor, critic, and writer (1887–1969)

Floyd James Dell was an American newspaper and magazine editor, literary critic, novelist, playwright, and poet. Dell has been called "one of the most flamboyant, versatile and influential American Men of Letters of the first third of the 20th Century." In Chicago, he was editor of the nationally syndicated Friday Literary Review. As editor and critic, Dell's influence is seen in the work of many major American writers from the first half of the 20th century. A lifelong poet, he was also a best-selling author, as well as a playwright whose hit Broadway comedy, Little Accident (1928), was made into a Hollywood movie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Morss Lovett</span> Governor of the United States Virgin Islands

Robert Morss Lovett was an American academic, writer, editor, political activist, and government official.

John Wesley Conroy was a leftist American writer, also known as a Worker-Writer, best known for his contributions to “proletarian literature,” fiction and nonfiction about the life of American workers during the early decades of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Mudford</span> British writer, essayist, translator of literary works and journalist

William Mudford was a British writer, essayist, translator of literary works and journalist. He also wrote critical and philosophical essays and reviews. His 1829 novel The Five Nights of St. Albans: A Romance of the Sixteenth Century received a good review from John Gibson Lockhart, an achievement which was considered a rare distinction. Mudford also published short fictional stories which were featured in periodicals such as Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Fraser's Magazine, and Bentley's Miscellany. His short story "The Iron Shroud", about an iron torture chamber which shrinks through mechanical action and eventually crushes the victim inside, was first published in August 1830 by Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and later republished separately in 1839 and 1840 with the subtitle "Italian Revenge". Edgar Allan Poe is considered to have been influenced by "The Iron Shroud" when he wrote "The Pit and the Pendulum" having got his idea for the shrinking chamber from Mudford's story. Mudford was born in London, where his father made a living as a shopkeeper in Piccadilly. He was influenced by John Milton, Joseph Addison, Samuel Johnson, William Cowper, William Collins, Mark Akenside, Thomas Gray, and Oliver Goldsmith.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rossiter Johnson</span> American writer (1840–1931)

Rossiter Johnson was an American author and editor. He edited several encyclopedias, dictionaries, and books, and was one of the first editors to publish "pocket" editions of the classics. He was also an author of histories, novels, and poetry. Among his best known works was Phaeton Rogers, a novel of boyhood in Rochester, New York, where Johnson was born.

<i>The Port Folio</i>

The Port Folio was an American literary and political magazine that was published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1801 to 1827.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Kendall Hosmer</span> American writer, academic and librarian

James Kendall Hosmer was an American (Union) soldier during the American Civil War, a pastor, library director, historian, author and a professor of history and literature. Members of the Hosmer family fought in the French and Indian War, American Revolution and the Civil War. As a pastor of the First Church in Deerfield, Massachusetts he left the ministry, feeling duty bound to join the U.S. Army to serve in the Civil War, insisting to serve at the front, where he participated in several major campaigns. As an author and historian he later wrote and published several works about and involving the Civil War and how he viewed the cause of both the North and South. He also authored a number of other works relating to early American history, along with several novels and a fair number of poems. Hosmer also reviewed and published accounts about the Lewis and Clark Expedition at a time when full accounts of the expedition were very few in number and out of print. During his career he corresponded with many prominent writers and historians involving his works. In his latter life he held several prominent positions in various literary associations, including his position as president of the American Library Association.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hobart Chatfield-Taylor</span> American novelist

Hobart Chatfield Chatfield-Taylor was an American writer, novelist, and biographer. He was considered a top authority on Molière.

Michael Anania is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. His modernist poetry meticulously evokes Midwestern prairies and rivers. His autobiographical novel, Red Menace, captured mid-twentieth century cold war angst and the colloquial speech of Nebraska, while the voice in his volumes of poetry distinctively reflects rural and urban Midwestern life in a "mixture of personal voice, historical fact, journalistic observation and a haiku-like format that pares lines down to the bare bones and pushes language to its limit."

References

  1. "News and Notes (obituary)". The Literary World . Boston. XXV (15): 237. July 28, 1894.
  2. Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume One: The Authors, Philip A. Greasley, General Editor, Indiana University Press, 2001, ISBN   0-253-33609-0

Wikisource-logo.svg  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature . London: J. M. Dent & Sons via Wikisource.