Individuals >> Benton, Joel (1832-1911)

Journalist, Poet, Editor, Lecturer, Essayist, Biographer,.

Joel Benton was raised in the small town of Amenia, New York. He entered the publishing world at the age of nineteen when he was hired as managing editor of the newly created Amenia Times. In 1856 he left the Times and spent the next fifteen years working as a farmer and dabbling in literary pursuits. Benton was an avid fan of Horace Greeley; he returned to journalism in 1872 in order to support Greeley during his presidential campaign. Even as a young man, "Benton always wrote with ease. His work is marked by keen observation, a pleasant humor, and a gift of phrase; his style is allusive, and tends to be over-literary. His spirit--except in political discussion, when he could be caustic--was gentle, and he was at his best in writing of out-of-door life or of the great men whom he had known. His verse is pleasing and expressive of his love for nature, but it is on the whole conventional and lacking in power" (Chase).

In 1883 Benton traveled to Minnesota and spent two years writing for Chicago and St. Paul newspapers. He moved to Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1885 and spent his remaining years in literary pursuits. He published several books, including Emerson as a Poet (1883), Greeley on Lincoln (1893), In the Poe Circle (1899), Life of P. T. Barnum (1902), and Memories of the Twilight Club (1909).

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References & Biographical Resources

Chase, Frank H. "Joel Benton." Dictionary of American Biography. Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2006. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC. [more about this work]

Rawson, A. L. "A Bygone Bohemia." Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. 1896. 96-107. [more about this work]

A member of Clare 's coterie of Bohemians. [pages: 103]

Renehan, Edward, Jr. John Burroughs: An American Naturalist. New York: Black Dome Press, 1998. [more about this work]

[pages: 61]

Seitz, Don Carlos. Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne): A Biography and Bibliography. NY: Harper & Brothers, 1919. [more about this work]

[pages: 333]

Wilson, James Grant and John Fiske, eds. Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume I, Aaron-Crandall. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888. [more about this work]

Cited as a valueable Emerson scholar, particularly following the poet's death. [pages: 240]