poem index   About this poet  Stephen Vincent Benét was born
July 22, 1898, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, into a military
family. His father had a wide appreciation for literature, and
Benét's siblings, William Rose and Laura, also became writers.
Benét attended Yale University where he published two
collections of poetry, Five Men and Pompey (1915), The Drug-Shop
(1917). His studies were interrupted by a year of civilian
military service; he worked as a cipher-clerk in the same
department as James Thurber. He graduated from Yale in 1919,
submitting his third volume of poems in place of a thesis. He
published his first novel The Beginning of Wisdom in 1921. Benét
then moved to France to continue his studies at the Sorbonne and
returned to the United States in 1923 with his new wife, the
writer Rosemary Carr.   A Selected Bibliography   A Book of
Americans (1933) Ballads and Poems, 1915-1930 (1931) Five Men
and Pompey (1915) Heavens and Earth (1920) James Shore's
Daughter (1934) John Brown's Body (1928) The Burn