Edward Rowland Sill Biography | Poet

Edward Rowland Sill was born in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1841. He graduated from Yale in 1861 and went West soon thereafter because of his poor health. After experimenting with many different vocations, he found himself teaching, first in the high schools of Ohio and then in the English department of the University of California. His precarious physical health had a mental consequence. Indecisive, he could not bring himself to be aligned with the lethargic conservatives he hated or to trust the radicals he despised. So, he became an uncomfortable and half-rebellious isolate whose self-division expressed itself half in rebelliousness and half in resignation. The last decade of his life was less brooding and more light; his dark satire had become lighter in wit.

In 1867, the first volume of The Hermitage was released, and an additional edition came out in 1889, containing his latest poems. Two other books released posthumously include Poems in 1887 and Hermione and Other Poems in 1899.

Sill died after bringing something from Eastern culture to the West in 1887.