Louis Untermeyer

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Louis Untermeyer (October 1, 1885 - December 18, 1977) was an American author, poet, anthologist, and editor.

1 Life
2 Books
3 External links

[edit] Life

Louis Untermeyer was born in New York City. He married Jean Starr in 1906. Their son Richard was born in 1907 and died under uncertain circumstances in 1927. After a 1926 divorce, they were reunited in 1929, after which they adopted two sons, Laurence and Joseph. He married the poet Virginia Moore in 1927; their son, John Moore Untermeyer (1928), was renamed John Fitzallen Moore after a painful 1929 divorce.

In the 1930s, he divorced Jean Starr Untermeyer and married Esther Antin, a relationship that lasted until 1948, when he married Bryna Ivens, an editor of "Seventeen" magazine.

He was well known for his wit and his love of puns. For a while, he held Marxist beliefs, writing for magazines such as The Masses, through which he advocated that the United States stay out of World War I. After the suppression of that magazine for by U.S. government, the joined The Liberator, published by the Workers Party of America. Later he wrote for the independent socialist magazine The New Masses.

He was a co-founder of "The Seven Arts," a poerty magazine that is credited for introducing many new poets, including Robert Frost, who became Untermeyer's long-term friend and correspondent.

In 1950, he was a panelist during the first year of What's My Line?. He was named during the hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigating communist subversion. This eventually resulted in his removal from What's My Line? when it started to become highly popular in 1951 and he was blacklisted by industry.

He was the author or editor of close to 100 books, from 1911 until his death. Many of them and his other memorabilia are preserved in a special section of the Lilly Library at the Indiana University.

Schools used his Modern American and British poetry books widely, and they often formed students' introduction to poetry. He and Bryna Ivens Untermeyer created a number of books for young people, under the Golden Treasury of Children's Literature. He lectured on literature for many years, both in the US and other countries.

In 1956 the Poetry Society of America awarded Untermeyer a Gold Medal. He also served as a Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1961 until 1963.

[edit] Books

[edit] Anthologies

Modern American Poetry (1919) (6th edition, 1942)
Modern British Poetry (1920) (5th edition, 1942)
Modern American and British Poetry (1919)
Yesterday and Today (1926)
New Songs for New Voices (1928), with Clara and David Mannes, illustrated by Peggy Bacon
A Treasury of Great Poems (1942, 1955)
The Golden Treasury of Poetry (1959), illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund
Story Poems (1946, 1972)
Early American Poets (1952)
An Uninhibited Treasury of Erotic Poetry (1963)
A Galaxy of Verse (1978)
Men and Women: the Poetry of Love (1970), illustrated by Robert J. Lee
Collins Albatross Book of Verse (1933, 1960)
Stars To Steer By (1941)
Lots of Limericks (1961), illustrated by R. Taylor
The Book of Living Verse (1932,1945)
Rainbow in the Sky (1935), illustrated by Reginald Birch
A Treasury of Laughter (1946)
An Anthology of New England Poets (1948)
The Best Humor of 1949-1950 (with Ralph E. Shikes, 1950)
The Best Humor Annual (with Ralph E. Shikes, 1951)
The Best Humor Annual (with Ralph E. Shikes, 1952)
The Magic Circle (1952)
A Treasury of Ribaldry (1956)
Big and Little Creatures (1961), with Bryna Ivens Untermeyer
Beloved Tales (1962), with Bryna Ivens Untermeyer
Old Friends and Lasting favorites (1962), with Bryna Ivens Untermeyer
Fun and Fancy (1962), with Bryna Ivens Untermeyer
Creatures Wild and Tame (1963), with Bryna Ivens Untermeyer
The Golden Book of Poems for the Very Young (1971)
A Treasury of Great Humor (1972)

[edit] Poetry

First Love (1911)
Challenge (1914)
Roast Leviathan (1923)
The New Adam (1920)
These Times (1917)
Burning Bush (19??)
Thanks (1965), illustrated by Joan Berg
Long Feud (1959, 1962)

[edit] Parodies

Heavens (19??)
Including Horace (19??)
— And Other Poets (1916)
Collected Parodies (1926)

[edit] Biography

Heinrich Heine: Paradox and Poet (1937)
Makers of the Modern World (with John Moore, 1955)
Makers of the Modern World selections, Japanese translation (1971)

[edit] Autobiography

From Another World (1935)
Bygones (1965)

[edit] Fiction

Moses (1923)
The Fat of the Cat and Other Stories (19??)
The Donkey of God and Other Stories (1932)
The Kitten Who Barked (1962), illustrated by Lilian Obligado
The Second Christmas (1964), illustrated by Louis Marak
Cat O' Nine Tales (1971), illustrated by Lawrence DiFiori

[edit] Adaptations, Translations

Poems of Heinrich Heine (19??)
The Wonderful Adventures of Paul Bunyan (1946), illustrated by Everett Gee Jackson
More French Fairy Tales (1946), illustrated by Gustave Doré
Cyrano de Bergerac (1954), illustrated by Pierre Brissaud
Aesop's Fables (1965), illustrated by A. and M. Provensen
Songs of Joy from the Book of Psalms (1967), illustrated by Joan Berg Victor
Tales from the Ballet (1968), illustrated by A. and M. Provensen
A Time for Peace (1969), illustrated by Joan Berg Victor
The World's Great Stories (1964)
The Firebringer (1968)

[edit] Essays

American Poetry Since 1900 (19??)
The Forms Of Poetry (1926)
Play in Poetry (1938)
Doorways to Poetry (1938)
The Lowest Form of Wit (1947)
The Pursuit of Poetry (1969)

[edit] Critical Collections

The Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1943)
The Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman (1949)
The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer (1963);
The Love Poems of Elizabeth and Robert Browning (1994)
The Love Poems of Robert Herrick and John Donne (1948)

[edit] External links

Louis Untermeyer (HTML). biography, with anecdote by Arthur Miller. Spartacus. Retrieved on 2006-10-16.

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