Timrod, Henry, 1828–67, American poet, b. Charleston, S.C., studied at the Univ. of Georgia. He was known as “the laureate of the Confederacy.” Timrod became editor of the Columbia South Carolinian in 1864, but, ruined by the war, he died in poverty of tuberculosis, having published only one volume of poems (1860). His works were posthumously edited (1873) by his friend P. H. Hayne. Timrod's finest poems are his “Ode to the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery,” “The Cotton Boll,” “Carolina,” and “Ethnogenesis.”
See the memorial edition of his Poems (1899) and critical editions of his Last Years, ed. by J. B. Hubbell (1941), Uncollected Poems, ed. by G. A. Cardwell, Jr. (1942), and Essays, ed. by E. W. Parker (1942). See also studies by H. T. Thompson (1928, repr. 1971) and E. W. Parks (1964).
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