Early life Griswold was born to Rufus and Deborah (Wass) Griswold on February 13, 1815, in
Vermont, near
Rutland, and raised a strict
Calvinist in the hamlet of
Benson. He was the twelfth of fourteen children and his father was a farmer and shoemaker. As a child, Griswold was complex, unpredictable, and reckless. He left home when he was 15, calling himself a "solitary soul, wandering through the world, a homeless, joyless outcast". Griswold moved to
Albany, New York, and lived with a 22-year-old flute-playing journalist named George C. Foster, a writer best known for his work
New-York by Gas-Light. Griswold attempted to enroll at the
Rensselaer School in 1830, but was not allowed to take any classes after he was caught attempting to play a prank on a professor.
Early career and first marriage After a brief spell as a printer's
apprentice, Griswold moved to Syracuse, New York, where He moved to New York City in 1836, and in March of that year, was introduced to 19-year-old Caroline Searles, whom he later married. He was employed as an editor for various publications in the New York area. In October, he considered running for office as a
Whig but did not receive the party's support. In 1837, he was licensed as a Baptist clergyman, but he never had a permanent congregation. and the couple had two daughters. Following the birth of their second daughter, Griswold left his family behind in New York and moved to Philadelphia. His departure on November 27, 1840 was by all accounts abrupt, leaving his job with
Horace Greeley's
New York Tribune, and his library of several thousand volumes. He refused to leave the cemetery after her funeral, even after the other mourners had left, until forced to do so by a relative. He wrote a long poem in blank verse dedicated to Caroline, titled "Five Days", which was printed in the
New York Tribune on November 16, 1842. Griswold had difficulty believing she had died and often dreamed of their reunion. Griswold's collection featured poems from over 80 authors, including 17 by
Lydia Sigourney, three by Edgar Allan Poe, and 45 by
Charles Fenno Hoffman. Griswold oversaw many anthologies, including
Biographical Annual, which collected memoirs of "eminent persons recently deceased",
Gems from American Female Poets,
Prose Writers of America, and
Female Poets of America. Between 1842 and 1845, while Griswold was collecting material for
Prose Writers of America, he discovered the identity of
Horace Binney Wallace, who had been writing in various literary magazines at the time (including ''
Burton's Gentleman's Magazine'') under the pen name William Landor. Wallace declined to be included in the anthology but the two became friends, exchanging many letters over the years. Wallace eventually ghostwrote Griswold's
Napoleon and the Marshals of the Empire (1847).
Prose Writers of America, published in 1847, was prepared specifically to compete with a similar anthology by
Cornelius Mathews and
Evert Augustus Duyckinck. The prose collection earned Griswold a rivalry with the two men, which Griswold expected. As it was being published, Griswold wrote to Boston publisher
James T. Fields that "
Young America will be rabid". In preparing his anthologies, Griswold wrote to the living authors whose work he was including to ask their suggestions on which poems to include as well as to gather information for a biographical sketch. In 1843, Griswold founded
The Opal, an annual
gift book that collected essays, stories, and poetry.
Nathaniel Parker Willis edited its first edition, released in the fall of 1844. For a time, Griswold was editor of the
Saturday Evening Post and published a collection of poetry, titled
The Cypress Wreath (1844). His poems, with titles such as "The Happy Hour of Death", "On the Death of a Young Girl", and "The Slumber of Death", emphasized mortality and mourning. Another collection of his poetry,
Christian Ballads and Other Poems, was published in 1844, and his nonfiction book,
The Republican Court or, American Society in the Days of Washington, was published in 1854. The book is meant to cover events during the presidency of
George Washington, though it mixes historical fact with apocryphal legend until one is indistinguishable from the other. During this period, Griswold occasionally offered his services at the pulpit delivering sermons and he may have received an honorary doctorate from
Shurtleff College, a Baptist institution in Illinois, leading to his nickname the "Reverend Dr. Griswold".
Second marriage On August 20, 1845, Griswold married Charlotte Myers, a Jewish woman; she was 42 and he was 33. Griswold had been pressured into the marriage by the woman's aunts despite his concern about their difference in religious beliefs. On their wedding night, he discovered that she was, according to Griswold biographer Joy Bayless, "through some physical misfortune, incapable of being a wife" or, as Poe biographer
Kenneth Silverman explains, incapable of having sex. The contract forbade Griswold from remarrying and paid him $1,000 (~$ in ) for expenses in exchange for his daughter Caroline staying with the Myers family. After this separation, Griswold immediately moved back to Philadelphia.
Move to New York City A few years later, Griswold moved back to New York City, leaving his younger daughter in the care of the Myers family and his elder daughter, Emily, with relatives on her mother's side. He had by now earned the nickname "Grand Turk", and in the summer of 1847, made plans to edit an anthology of poetry by American women. He believed that women were incapable of the same kind of "intellectual" poetry as men and believed they needed to be divided: "The conditions of aesthetic ability in the two sexes are probably distinct, or even opposite", he wrote in his introduction. The selections he chose for
The Female Poets of America were not necessarily the greatest examples of poetry but instead were chosen because they emphasized traditional morality and values. The same year, Griswold began working on what he considered "the maximum opus of his life", an extensive biographical dictionary. Although he worked on it for several years and even advertised for it, he never produced it. He also helped
Elizabeth F. Ellet publish her book
Women of the American Revolution, and was angered when she did not acknowledge his assistance in the book. In July 1848, he visited poet
Sarah Helen Whitman in Providence, Rhode Island, but he had been suffering with
vertigo and exhaustion, rarely leaving his apartment at New York University, and was unable to write without taking
opium. He wrote to publisher James T. Fields: "I am in a terrible condition, physically and mentally. I do not know what the end will be ... I am exhausted—betwixt life and death—and heaven and hell." Griswold continued editing and contributing literary criticism for various publications, both full-time and freelance, including 22 months from July 1, 1850, to April 1, 1852, with
The International Magazine. There, he worked with contributors including
Elizabeth Oakes Smith,
Mary E. Hewitt and
John R. Thompson. In the November 10, 1855, issue of
The Criterion, Griswold anonymously reviewed the first edition of
Walt Whitman's
Leaves of Grass, declaring: "It is impossible to image how any man's fancy could have conceived such a mass of stupid filth". Griswold charged that Whitman was guilty of "the vilest imaginings and shamefullest license", a "degrading, beastly sensuality." Referring to Whitman's poetry, Griswold said he left "this gathering of muck to the laws which ... must have the power to suppress such gross obscenity." Whitman later included Griswold's review in a new edition of
Leaves of Grass. He ended his review with a phrase in Latin referring to "that horrible sin, among Christians not to be named", the stock phrase long associated with Christian condemnations of sodomy, referring in this instance to homosexual, rather than heterosexual sodomy. Griswold was the first person in the 19th century to publicly point to and stress the theme of erotic desire and acts between men in Whitman's poetry. More attention to that aspect of Whitman's poetry surfaced late in the 19th century.
Divorce and third marriage After a brief flirtation with poet
Alice Cary, Griswold pursued a relationship with Harriet McCrillis. He originally did not want to divorce Charlotte Myers because he "dreaded the publicity" and because of her love for his daughter. He applied for divorce at the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia on March 25, 1852. Elizabeth Ellet and
Ann S. Stephens wrote to Myers urging her not to grant the divorce, and to McCrillis not to marry him. To convince Myers to agree to the divorce, Griswold allowed her to keep his daughter Caroline if she signed a statement that she had deserted him. She agreed, and the divorce was made official December 18; he likely never saw Myers or his daughter again. McCrillis and Griswold were married shortly thereafter on December 26, 1852, and settled at 196 West Twenty-third Street in New York. Their son, William, was born on October 9, 1853. Ellet and Stephens continued writing to Griswold's ex-wife, urging her to have the divorce repealed. Myers was convinced and filed in Philadelphia on September 23, 1853. The court, however, had lost records of the divorce and had to delay the appeal. Adding to Griswold's troubles, that fall, a gas leak in his home caused an explosion and a fire.
Death Griswold died of
tuberculosis in New York City on August 27, 1857.
Estelle Anna Lewis, a friend and writer, suggested that the interference of Elizabeth Ellet had exacerbated Griswold's condition and that she "goaded Griswold to his death". At the time of his death, the sole decorations found in his room were portraits of himself, Frances Osgood, and Poe. A friend,
Charles Godfrey Leland, found in Griswold's desk several documents attacking a number of authors which Griswold was preparing for publication. Leland decided to burn them. Griswold's funeral was held on August 30. His pallbearers included Leland,
Charles Frederick Briggs,
George Henry Moore, and
Richard Henry Stoddard. Although his library of several thousand volumes was auctioned, raising over $3,000 (~$ in ) to be put toward a monument, none was commissioned. ==Reputation and influence==