William Stanley Braithwaite


William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite was an African American writer, poet, literary critic, anthologist, and publisher.

Career

At the age of 12, upon the death of his father, Braithwaite was forced to quit school to support his family. When he was aged 15 he was apprenticed to a typesetter for the Boston publisher, Ginn & Co., where he discovered an affinity for lyric poetry and began to write his own poems. After early publications in periodicals, he published his first collection of 63 poems, Lyrics of Life and Love, at the age of 26 in 1904. From 1901-1902, Braithwaite served as an editor of the Boston-published Colored American Magazine. By 1906 he had been accepted as a member of the prestigious Boston Authors Club.
From 1905 to 1931 he wrote for The Boston Evening Transcript, contributing columns about contemporary poets and an annual survey of the field. He also wrote articles, reviews and poetry for many other periodicals and journals, including the Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, New York Times, The New Republic, The Crisis, Opportunity, and Colored American Magazine. He also began publishing anthologies on poetry of various periods, such as the Georgian and Elizabethan eras.

Annual Anthologies

The surveys that Braithwaite published in the Boston Evening Transcript led him to begin his most important life work: publishing an annual anthology of "Magazine Verse." These anthologies covered a wide range of poets, from the conservative to the avant-garde, the established to the new, as well as an introduction in which Braithwaite discussed his perspective on the current state of poetry. The works published were culled from both commercial magazines and modernist little magazines. They also included indexes of published verse and other information that provided insight into publishing trends of the day. Braithwaite indicated favored works in these lists with an asterisk, establishing in this way his own "canon" of poets and poems. Though Braithwaite has been received with ambivalence by African American critics from his own lifetime to today for his lack of discussion of African American issues in both his verse and anthologies, his anthologies are notable for their inclusion of African American writers. The success and influence of Braithwaite's anthology series may be seen in its growing length: the first was 87 pages in length, while the 15th reached more than 1,000. Though influential, however, the anthologies were not moneymakers; they were published by five different houses over the years, and unlike some anthologies of the time, did not receive payment for including a poet's work.

Magazine Publishing

Braithwaite launched a periodical, Poetry Journal, in December 1912, but not long after, handed off the project to others. He launched another periodical, the monthly Poetry Review of America, in 1916; this project folded after less than a year.

Book Publishing

In 1921 he established the B. J. Brimmer publishing company, which published poetry, non-fiction, and anthologies. His business partner and treasurer of the company was the writer and poet Winifred Virginia Jackson, known for her collaborations and romantic reiationship with H.P. Lovecraft.

Professorship and retirement

In 1935, Braithwaite assumed a professorship of creative literature at the historically Black Atlanta University. He retired from this position in 1945. In 1946, he and his family moved to Sugar Hill in Harlem, New York where Braithwaite continued to write and publish poetry, essays and anthologies.

Harlem Renaissance

Braithwaite is recognized as having a significant role in publishing Harlem Renaissance poets for a wide audience through his anthologies, despite his own conservatism in discussing race in his own work. In 1927, the poet Countee Cullen dedicated the anthology Caroling Dusk, An Anthology of Negro Poets, to Braithwaite. James Weldon Johnson acknowledged Braithwaite as an influence upon his work.

Personal Life

Braithwaite was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1878. According to Jill Lepore, his father "came from a wealthy British Guiana family; his mother was the daughter of a North Carolina slave." His father preferred that the children be educated at home, and until his untimely death, they were raised in a genteel household of means. Braithwaite married Emma Kelly in 1903; they had seven children. He died at his home at 409 Edgecombe Avenue home in Harlem after a brief illness on June 8, 1962.

Works

Fiction

The Canadian
The Story of the Great War, F. A. Stokes, 1919.
Going Over Tindal: A Fragment Wrenched From the Life of Titus Jabson, B. J. Brimmer, 1924.
Frost on the Green Leaf

Poetry

Lyrics of Life and Love
The House of Falling Leaves
Selected Poems

Non-fiction

Preface, V. Stanley Milliken, Songs of the Nomad: Some Posthumous Poems
Introduction, Charles Gibson, The Wounded Eros: Sonnets
Preface, The Poetry of Thomas S. Jones, Jr
Introduction to Edward Smyth Jones, The Sylvan Cabin: A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verses
The Poetic Year for 1916: A Critical Anthology
Introduction to Georgia Douglas Johnson, The Heart of a Woman: And Other Poems
Introduction to A.E. Houseman, A Shropshire Lad
The Story of the Great War
Introduction to B. 8266, Penitentiary, A Tale of a Walled Town: and Other Verses
Introduction to Brookes More, The Beggar's Vision
Introduction to J. Corson Miller, Veils of Samite
Forward to Maud Cuney-Hare, The Message of the Trees
John Myers O'Hara and the Grecian Influence
Introduction to Rosa Zagnioni Marinoni and Mary Carolyn Davies, Red Kites and Wooden Crosses
Introduction to Mae Cowdery, WE Lift Our Voices and Other poems
Biographical essay in S.S. Van Dine, Philo Vance Murder Cases
The Bewitched Parsonage: The Story of the Brontës, Coward-McCann, 1950.
The William Stanley Braithwaite Reader, edited by Philip Butcher
The House Under Artcthurus. Unfinished autobiography published in part in the periodical Phylon.

Anthology Editor

Book of Elizabethan Verse with an introduction by Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Book of Georgian Verse
Book of Restoration Verse
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913: Including the Magazines and the Poets: A Review
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914: And Year Book of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1915: and Year Book of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1916 and Year Book of American Poetry
With Henry Thomas Schnittkind, Representative American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1917 and Yearbook of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1918 and Year Book of American Poetry
The Golden Treasury of Magazine Verse
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1919: And Year Book of American Poetry
The Book of Modern British Verse,
Victory! Celebrated by Thirty-Eight American Poets, introduction by Theodore Roosevelt
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920: And Year Book of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921: And Year Book of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1922: And Year Book of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1923: And Year Book of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1924: And Year Book of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1925: And Year Book of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1926: And Year Book of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1927: And Year Book of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1928: And Yearbook of American Poetry
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1929: And Yearbook of American Poetry
Our Lady's Choir: A Contemporary Anthology of Verse by Catholic Sisters, foreword by Hugh Francis Blunt, introduction by Ralph Adams Cram
Anthology of American Verse for 1958 with Margaret Haley Carpenter

Magazine Editor

Poetry Journal, published at the Four Seas Company
The Citizen
Stratford Monthly: A Forum of Contemporary International Thought
Poetry Review of America

Selected Anthology Appearances

In Alain Locke, The New Negro
In James Weldon Johnson, The Book of American Negro Poetry
In Menckeniana: A Schimpflexicon
In Langston Hughes and Arno Bontemps, The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949

Awards

In 1918 he was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Archives

The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia holds 40 boxes of manuscripts, correspondence, and other related materials related mainly to this editorial work, in three separate Braithwaite collections.
Harvard University's Houghton Library holds a 30-box collection comprising mostly letters from poets to Braithwaite.