Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873) was an American poet, now remembered mostly for his sonnet series.

Biography

He was born into a prosperous and distinguished Boston family. He entered Harvard University in 1841, but did not remain long. He became a lawyer, being admitted to the bar in 1845. In 1847 he married Anna Jones, and they settled in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in The Berkshires at one end of the Mohawk Trail; they had three children. Her death in 1857 was the reason he started to write seriously; many of the sonnets he then wrote remained unpublished until 1931. It has been noted that they exhibit systematically varied rhyme schemes.

He published Poems in 1860; it was his only poetry collection published in his lifetime. He also contributed verse to periodicals including The Continental Monthly and Atlantic Monthly. He was a long term correspondent of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whom he visited in 1855; he was also in touch with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, but his life was introverted and he made little attempt to gain wide recognition.

His other interests were astronomy and botany; his botanical poem The Cricket is still cited. He is commemorated by Poet's Seat Tower in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

References