WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF. – American poet, born in Haverhill (Massachusetts) on 17 December 1807, died at Hampton Falls on 7 September 1892. He was the son of a Quaker farmer, and the beginnings of his career were difficult.
He enthusiastically embraced the cause of abolitionism and devoted much of his poetic work to it, although he was aware that, by doing so, he rendered it occasional and limited its intrinsic value. His vocation was, in fact, for the ballad of local color, and the reading of Burns, to whom he dedicated one of his finest poems (1854), had guided him toward II. The complete edition of his verse was published in 1888–90. Moralism and political passion predominate in II.
BIBL.: S. T. Pickard, J. G. W., 2 vols., Boston 1894; A. Mordell, Quaker Militant: J. G. W., there 1933. Augusto Guidi