Poetry:
Five Men and Pompey, 1915
Young Adventure, 1918
Heavens and Earth, 1920
King David, 1923
Tiger Joy, 1925
John Brown’s Body, 1928
Ballads and Poems, 1915-1930, 1931
A Book of Americans, 1933 (with Rosemary Carr Benét)
Burning City, 1936
The Ballad of the Duke’s Mercy, 1939
Western Star, 1943
Long Fiction:
The Beginning of Wisdom, 1921
Young People’s Pride, 1922
Jean Huguenot, 1923
Spanish Bayonet, 1926
James Shore’s Daughter, 1934
Short Fiction:
Thirteen O’Clock, 1937
Tales Before Midnight, 1939
Twenty-five Short Stories, 1943
Drama:
Nerves, pr. 1924 (with John Chipman Farrar)
That Awful Mrs. Eaton, pr. 1924 (with Farrar)
The Headless Horseman, pr., pb. 1937
The Devil and Daniel Webster, pr. 1938
Radio Plays:
We Stand United, and Other Radio Scripts, 1945
Nonfiction:
America, 1944
Stephen Vincent Benét on Writing: A Great Writer’s Letters of Advice to a Young Beginner, 1946
Selected Letters of Stephen Vincent Benét, 1960
Miscellaneous:
Selected Works of Stephen Vincent Benét, 1942 (Basil Davenport, editor)
Stephen Vincent Benét: Selected Poetry and Prose, 1942 (Davenport, editor)
The Last Circle, 1946
Stephen Vincent Benét (beh-NAY) was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on July 22, 1898. His father, Colonel J. Walker Benét, was the third generation of the family to make a career of the Army. Himself interested in literature, he left his mark on his children, William Rose, Stephen Vincent, and Laura. The young Stephen started his career as a writer by winning prizes from St. Nicholas Magazine. He spent his youth mostly on army posts and went to school in Georgia and California. From Yale University he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1919 and his master’s degree in 1920. While at Yale he numbered among his friends Thornton Wilder, Archibald MacLeish, and Philip Barry. During his senior year he served as editor of the Yale Literary Magazine. He also studied at the Sorbonne in France where he met his wife, Rosemary Carr, also a poet. In 1926 he went again to France, this time to study on a Guggenheim Fellowship for two years and to produce his famous American epic poem of the Civil War, John Brown’s Body, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1929. Outstanding for its historical exactness and sense of patriotism, this book-length narrative poem has become an American classic.
Stephen Vincent Benét
Benét was the recipient of many honors besides the Pulitzer Prize. In 1923 his “King David” won the poetry prize in the Nation magazine. In 1932 he won the Shelley Memorial award and in 1933 the Roosevelt Medal of the Roosevelt Memorial Association for his contribution to American letters.
Shortly before entering Yale, Benét published in 1915 a volume titled Five Men and Pompey, a series of six dramatic monologues in verse. In 1918 he published Young Adventure, a book of poems. His first novel, The Beginning of Wisdom, was published in 1921 after his return from Paris. “King David,” “The Ballad of William Sycamore, 1790-1880,” and Jean Huguenot, a novel, appeared in 1923. In 1925 he published a collection of poems titled Tiger Joy. In 1933, with his wife, Rosemary Carr Benét, he published A Book of Americans, a collection of poems for children. This was followed in 1936 by Burning City, poems reflecting national themes and the decade of crisis in which they were written.
He was the author of such excellent short stories as “Johnny Pye and the Fool Killer” and “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” This last story, which first appeared in a collection titled Thirteen O’Clock, has had an interesting subsequent history: It was rewritten as a play, then as a musical (with music by Douglas Moore), and finally as a motion picture titled All That Money Can Buy. Benét is the author of another musical play, The Headless Horseman, for which Douglas Moore also wrote the music. After his death in New York City in 1943 Benét’s collected radio scripts were published under the title of We Stand United, and Other Radio Scripts. Western Star, the first part of an unfinished narrative on American history, is complete in itself. Published posthumously in 1943, it won the Pulitzer Prize the following year.