Benét, William Rose

Related Category: American Literature: Biographies

1886–1950, American poet and editor, b. Brooklyn, grad. Yale, 1907; brother of Stephen Vincent Benét. He was associated as editor or assistant editor with the Century Magazine, the Literary Review of the New York Evening Post, and the Saturday Review of Literature (which he helped found in 1924). His books include such collections of poetry as Merchants from Cathay (1913), The Great White Wall (1916), and Man Possessed (1927); a novel, The First Person Singular (1922); a volume of essays, Wild Goslings (1927); and an anthology, The Reader's Encyclopedia (1948). He also coedited The Oxford Anthology of American Literature (1938). His autobiographical verse-narrative, The Dust Which Is God (1941), won the 1942 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His second wife was the poet, Elinor Wylie, whose poems he edited in 1932.