Richard Henry Dana was born in
Cambridge, Massachusetts on November 15, 1787, and was the son of Federalist judge
Francis Dana. After attending school in
Newport, Rhode Island, he enrolled at
Harvard College and was suspended after participating in the so-called Rotten Cabbage Riots in 1807 before graduating in 1808 despite not returning to classes. Dana passed the bar in 1811 In a review of the poetry of
Washington Allston, he noted his belief that poetry was the highest form of art, though it should be simple and must avoid
didacticism. During his time as the magazine's associate editor, he accepted
William Cullen Bryant's poem "Thanatopsis" for publication and the two eventually formed a long-term friendship. Dana used the magazine as an outlet for his criticism, though he lost editorial control of it on account of his opposition to standard conventions. Though some of his criticisms were controversial when first published, by 1850 his opinions were conventional. As he wrote at the time, "Much that was once held to be presumptuous novelty... [became] little better than commonplace". In 1821, Dana founded a periodical titled
The Idle Man, modeled after
Samuel Johnson's
The Idler, though it lasted only four issues. Most of its contents were written by Dana himself. Dana's friend Washington Allston began writing
Monaldi for inclusion in the magazine before it was discontinued; the novel was not published until 1842. Dana published what became one of his most well-known poems, "The Buccaneer", in 1827. A narrative poem of more than 700 lines, it was strongly influenced by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and remained popular through the 1830s. As a writer of fiction, Dana was an early practitioner of
Gothic literature, particularly with his novel
Paul Felton (1822), a tale of madness and murder. Dana had difficulty supporting his family through his writing, which earned him only $400 over 30 years. Between 1838 and 1851, Dana earned a substantial income by offering education classes for women focused on English language literature and giving public lectures on topics including
William Shakespeare in cities like Boston, Providence, New York, and Philadelphia. In 1849, he was elected into the
National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician. Dana died at age 91 at his home at 43 Chestnut Street in Boston's
Beacon Hill, where he had lived for more than 40 years, on February 2, 1879. He was buried in the family plot at the
Old Burying Ground next to the
First Parish in Cambridge.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose daughter Edith married Dana's grandson Richard Henry Dana III in 1878, wrote a tribute to the elder writer after his death titled "
The Burial of the Poet, Richard Henry Dana". ==Works==