In 1841 was published A Year’s Life, Lowell’s first volume of verse; it was followed by Poems (1844), by a volume of prose, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets (1845), and by Poems, ‘second series’ (1848).
The ‘Ianthe’ of A Year’s Life was easily identified with Maria White, the gifted and beautiful girl who, in December, 1844, became the poet’s wife. The first year of their married life was passed in Philadelphia, whither Lowell had taken his bride to protect her from the harsh New England winter. Their financial resources were few, but of gayety and courage there was no lack. Lowell aspired to live by his pen. What with the small sums paid him (rather against his will) for editorial work on ‘The Pennsylvania Freeman,’ what with the hardly larger sums for contributions to ‘Graham’s Magazine’ and ‘The Broadway Journal,’ he managed to subsist.
Nevertheless, it seemed best for a number of reasons that the young people return to Cambridge and make a common home at ‘Elmwood’ with Lowell’s parents. In June of this year (1846) appeared ‘A Letter from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of Jaalam to the Hon. Joseph T. Buckingham, editor of the Boston Courier, inclosing a poem of his son, Mr. Hosea Biglow.’ This was the first of The Biglow Papers, the initial attack of many attacks Lowell was to make on slavery with the weapons of satire and ridicule. During 1847 three more ‘papers’ were printed in the ‘Courier;’ the remaining five appeared in ‘The National Anti-Slavery Standard.’
When the ‘Standard’ passed from the control of a board of editors into the hands of Sydney Howard Gay, Lowell became a salaried contributor, and for a time his name appeared as corresponding editor. He was allowed a free hand. Abolitionist though he was, his abolitionism was tempered with a deal of sympathy for slaveholders. And he had interests which most reformers of the time lacked, a passionate love of letters, for example. Hence it was that in the midst of leader-writing he was penning A Fable for Critics and The Vision of Sir Launfal.
The winter of 1851–52 Lowell spent with his family in Italy, and the following spring and summer in journeyings through France, England, Scotland, and Wales. In October he sailed for home, having as ship companions Thackeray and Arthur Hugh Clough. Just a year later Mrs. Lowell died (October 27, 1853). For months afterward Lowell was in ‘great agony of mind, and he had to force himself into those laborious hours which one instinctively feels contain a wise restorative.’[65]
He abounded in literary plans, some of which (and among them a novel) were never carried out, whereas others, his papers in ‘Putnam’s Magazine’ and his lectures on English Poetry, before the Lowell Institute, were in a high degree successful. Each lecture of the Institute course had to be given twice, so great was the demand for tickets. Lowell was very nervous over his first platform experience, and not a little pleased when he found that he could hold the audience an hour and a quarter (‘they are in the habit of going out at the end of the hour’). The singular merit of the lectures led to his being appointed to the chair of belles-lettres at Harvard, just resigned by Longfellow. After a year’s study abroad the new professor entered on his academic duties (September, 1856).
In 1857 Lowell married Miss Frances Dunlap, of Portland, Maine. She was a woman of reserved though gracious manners and rare beauty, who through her serene temper and fine critical sagacity, together with a keen sense of the humorous, exerted a most beneficent influence on Lowell’s life.
The burdens of college work were not so heavy as to prevent Lowell’s assuming the editorship of ‘The Atlantic Monthly,’ a new literary magazine with an anti-slavery bias. He held this post from 1857 to 1861, and proved to be one of the best of editors, though routine was irksome to him, and the vagaries of contributors called for more patience than he could at all times command. Two years after leaving the ‘Atlantic’ he undertook to edit the ‘North American Review’ in company with Charles Eliot Norton, on whom fell the chief responsibilities. Lowell, for his part, contributed to the ‘Review’ many notable papers on politics and literature.
The Civil War called out much of Lowell’s most spirited prose and not a little of his best poetry. A second series of Biglow Papers appeared in the ‘Atlantic,’ and for the commemoration of sons of Harvard who had fought for the Union, Lowell wrote his magnificent Commemoration Ode. This noble performance was literally an improvisation, written in a single night.
At this point we may take note of Lowell’s publications, subsequent to the Poems, ‘second series.’ They are: A Fable for Critics, 1848; The Biglow Papers, 1848; Fireside Travels, 1864; The Biglow Papers, ‘second series,’ 1866; Under the Willows and Other Poems, 1869; The Cathedral, 1870; Among My Books, 1870; My Study Windows, 1871; Among My Books, ‘second series,’ 1876; Three Memorial Poems, 1877; Democracy and Other Addresses, 1887; Political Addresses, 1888; Heartsease and Rue, 1888.