(1878 - 1962)
| William Stanley Braithwaite / Poet, Literary Critic, Editor, & Anthologist | (1878 - 1962) |
| Biography: | Poet, literary critic, editor, and anthologist, William Stanley Braithwaite was a distinguished fellow of American letters. Braithwaite was born in Boston and largely educated at home. His father was a native of British Guiana and his light-skinned mother was the daughter of a mulatto ex-slave. His passion for literature was fostered in the years he spent as an apprentice for the publisher, Ginn & Company. Braithwaite published his first volume of poetry, Lyrics of Life and Love, in 1904, followed four years later by The House of Falling Leaves. He was the literary editor of the Boston Evening Transcript between 1908 and 1929, and achieved a national reputation as the editor of the annual Anthology of Magazine Verse and Year Book of American Poetry, published from 1913 to 1939. His criticism and poetry also appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, The North American Review, and Scribner's Magazine. In addition to several anthologies of British literature, other works by Braithwaite include Our Essayists and Critics of Today; A Fragment Wrenched from the Life of Titus Jabson (1924), a novel; Frost on the Green Leaf (1928) , a collection of short stories; Selected Poems (1948); and an autobiography, The House Under Arcturus (1941).
In 1981 Braithwaite became the fourth recipient of the Spingarn Medal, endowed by Joel E. Spingarn, the board chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., and a awarded annually to an African-American for outstanding achievement. In that same year, he received honorary degrees from Atlanta University and Talledega College. He was a professor of literature at Atlanta University from 1935 until 1945. Historian Jervis Anderson refers to Braithwaite as "a leader of the older black literary generation," a "patriarch" who once advised Claude McKay, than an emerging young writer of the Harlem Renaissance, to write in a manner that would not disclose his racial identity. However, despite such differences of opinion between the old and new generations of African-American writers, Braithwaite did much to encourage the literary movement of the 1920s. The Braithwaite family took up residence at 409 Edgecombe Avenue in 1941; following Braithwaite's death, his widow and children remained at 409. |
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| Bibliography: | Anderson, 196, 212. Arnold Braithwaite letter. Low and Clift, 189-90. Manhattan Address Telephone Directories. New York Times [obituary], June 9, 1962, p. 25. |
