Stephen Vincent Benet: Essays on His Life and Work

When Stephen Vincent Ben t died in 1943 at the age of 44, all of America mourned the loss. Ben t was one of the country's most well known poets of the first half of the twentieth century and as a fiction writer, he had an even larger audience. This book is a collection of essays celebrating Ben t and his writing. The first group of essays addresses Ben t's life, times, and personal relationships. Thomas Carr Ben t reminisces about his father in the first essay, and others consider Ben t's marriage to his wife Rosemary; Archibald MacLeish, Thornton Wilder and Ben t as friends, liberal humanists and public activists; and his friendships with Philip Barry, Jed Harris, and Thornton Wilder. The second group contains essays about Ben t's poetry, fiction, and drama. They discuss Ben t's role in the development of historical poetry in America, John Brown's Body and the Civil War, Hawthorne, Ben t and historical fiction, Ben t's Faustian America, the adaptation of "The Devil and Daniel Webster" to drama and then to film, Ben t's use of fantasy and science fiction, and Ben t as a dramatist for stage, screen and radio.