Frank Lebby Stanton
Frank Lebby Stanton | |
---|---|
Atlanta, Georgia | |
Pen name | Frank L. Stanton Frank Stanton F. L. Stanton |
Occupation | Poet, lyricist, columnist |
Literary movement | Early Southern Renaissance |
Notable works | "Just Awearyin' for You" "Mighty Like a Rose" ""Morning" |
Frank Lebby Stanton (February 22, 1857 – January 7, 1927),[1] frequently credited as Frank L. Stanton, Frank Stanton or F. L. Stanton, was an American lyricist.
He was also the initial columnist for the
Eminence
Stanton was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to Valentine Stanton (a printer, Confederate soldier, and farmer) and his wife Catherine Rebecca Parry Stanton, whose father owned a plantation on Kiawah Island. From early childhood he was influenced by the hymns of Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley and was reared in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. After starting school in Savannah, Georgia, Frank Lebby Stanton found his education cut off by the American Civil War. At the age of 12 he became apprenticed to a printer, a position which allowed him to enter the newspaper business. In 1887 he met Leone Josey while he was working for the Smithville News; they married and, in 1888, moved to Rome, Georgia, where Frank Lebby Stanton had received an offer from John Temple Graves to serve as night editor for the Rome Tribune. With encouragement from
Verse
Frank Lebby Stanton's verse is marked by simplicity and charm as well as sentimentality which was then en vogue. His poems include a number which he wrote in dialect, a challenge for which he had special knack, such as "
Productivity
According to the
Collections of his work are listed by Connecticut State Library,[11] Valdosta State University,[12] University of Rochester (Eastman School of Music),[13] and Music Australia.[14]
On many occasions, leading to his selection as poet laureate, Stanton was called on to furnish poetry for occasions of state, one of them being the opening of Atlanta's
Legacy
Stanton has been frequently compared with Indiana's James Whitcomb Riley or called "the James Whitcomb Riley of the South"; Stanton and Riley were close friends who frequently traded poetic ideas.[20] Although Stanton frequently wrote in the dialect of black southerners and poor whites, he was an opponent of the less-admirable aspects (such as lynching) of the culture in which he lived, and he tended to be compatible in philosophy with the southern progressivism of his employer, the Atlanta Constitution, for which he wrote editorials. These and other characteristics of Stanton are well elaborated in the scholarly essays on him by Francis J. Bosha[21] and Bruce M. Swain.[22]
Shortly after his death Stanton was commemorated in the naming of the Frank Lebby Stanton Elementary School, which, after the redesignation of a street name for its eponym still unborn at the time of Stanton's death, is at 1625 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Atlanta.[23]
Five items by Stanton appear in Edmund Clarence Stedman's American Anthology 1787–1900, published in 1900:[24]
- "One Country" (Stedman's Item 1286)
- "A Plantation Ditty" (Stedman's Item 1287)
- "The Graveyard Rabbit" (Stedman's Item 1288)
- "The Mocking-Bird" (Stedman's Item 1289)
- "A Little Way" (Stedman's Item 1290)
One of Stanton's works most widely quoted during his lifetime was a quatrain titled "This World"; it is inscribed on his tombstone in Atlanta's Westview Cemetery:[25]
- This world we're a'livin' in
- Is mighty hard to beat.
- You get a thorn with every rose.
- But ain't the roses sweet?
Musical settings of his poetry
Stanton collaborated with
References
- ^ Stanton entry in the U.S. Dictionary of Literary Biography.
- ^ Biographical information with Stanton's "Keep a-Goin'" poem. For further information see Bookrags.com essay on Stanton (requires fee).
- ^ Harris and Stanton shared an office on the fifth floor of the Atlanta Constitution's building. Visitors to that office included Richard Malcolm Johnson, Hamlin Garland, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Charles A. Dana, Joaquin Miller, James Ryder Randall, Samuel Minturn Peck, Will Hamilton Hayne, Fred Emerson Brooks, James Whitcomb Riley (whom Stanton referred to as "Jim"), and Major Charles William Hubner.Perry, L.L.; Wightman, Melton F. (1938), Frank Lebby Stanton: Georgia's First Post Laureate, Atlanta: Georgia State Department of Education., pp. 12, 32. For further information on Hubner see the Oglethorpe University Hubner site. Archived September 7, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Commentary on Stanton by America.net.
- ^ Perry, L.L.; Wightman, Melton F. (1938), Frank Lebby Stanton: Georgia's First Post Laureate, Atlanta: Georgia State Department of Education, p. 41
- Musical Quarterly, Vol. XVII (1931), pp. 47–73.
- ^ See the list in the Speaks article in the Dutch Wikipedia.
- Harry T. Burleigh:
- Just a-wearying for you, for medium voice & piano. New York: William Maxwell, 1906. 6p. Text: Frank L. Stanton. Library: Library of Congress.
- ^ Tubb, Benjamin Robert (December 13, 1999). "The music of Carrie Jacobs-Bond (1861–1946)". PDMusic. Retrieved July 17, 2012.
- ^ WorldCat Identities Archived December 30, 2010, at the Wayback Machine:Stanton, Frank Lebby 1857–1927
- ^ Connecticut State Library 7lSeW.
- ^ "Marcelle Stanton Megahee's compilation Just from Georgia". Archived from the original on February 23, 2012. Retrieved January 28, 2010.
- ^ Stanton in UR Research.[permanent dead link]
- ^ Stanton in Music Australia's "Various Composers" category. See also "A Happy Philosopher" (Stanton poem to A. J. Chase, with a note by Chase) and Stanton in the Old Poetry site.
- W.E.B. Du Bois.
- ^ Walker also used the phrase "the Frank Lebby Stanton of Indiana" to describe James Whitcomb Riley.Perry, L.L.; Wightman, Melton F. (1938), Frank Lebby Stanton: Georgia's First Post Laureate, Atlanta: Georgia State Department of Education., pp. 10, 26–27, 32
- Seven Songs as Unpretentious as the Wild Rose. A dedicatory phrase "To F. B." atop the musical score inside is Jacobs-Bond's commemoration of her late second husband, Frederic Bond. The song has been widely recorded, including by Paul Robeson.
- ^ The poem appears in Stanton's Songs of the Soil, published 1894 in New York by D. Appleton & Company, which owned the copyright. Stanton had originally published the poem in the Atlanta Constitution.
- ISBN 978-0-595-53017-5, pp. 14–17, narrates that Stanton made "a hundred times" (p. 16) more on his poem combined with Jacobs-Bond's tune than on the rest of Songs of the Soil combined.
- ^ Perry, L.L.; Wightman, Melton F. (1938), Frank Lebby Stanton: Georgia's First Post Laureate, Atlanta: Georgia State Department of Education., p. 33 Both Riley and Stanton have likewise been compared with Robert Burns.
- ISBN 0-19-512799-4, pp. 565–566.
- ISBN 0-8103-1704-4, pp. 262–268. See also Wightman F. Melton, Frank Lebby Stanton: Georgia's First Poet Laureate (Atlanta: Georgia State Department of Education, 1938), ASIN B000EQUSUM, 42 pp.
- ^ F. L. Stanton School site.
- ^ Bartleby for Stedman 1286, Stedman 1287, Stedman 1288, Stedman 1289, Bartleby for Stedman 1290.
- ^ Perry, L.L.; Wightman, Melton F. (1938), Frank Lebby Stanton: Georgia's First Post Laureate, Atlanta: Georgia State Department of Education., p. 14
- H. T. Burleigh), dedicated to Mrs. James Speyer, Item 12241, high voice in E-flat (Philadelphia: Theodore Presser Company, 1914).
- ^ That Frank Lebby Stanton is the "Frank L. Stanton" of the authorship is clear from p. 3 of the published score, which has an asterisk by his name, leading to "From the 'Atlanta Constitution;' used by permission". Stanton, Frank L[ebby]; Speaks, Oley (1910). Morning. New York: G. Schirmer. p. 3. This work was also published as "Morning". Catalogue Number 22293. Melbourne: Allan & Company. 1910. Retrieved March 5, 2013. To see other pages of the Australian online edition, switch the number in the URL's "s3-e" to the page desired.
External links
- Works by Frank Lebby Stanton at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Frank Lebby Stanton at Internet Archive
- Works by Frank Lebby Stanton at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- "Morning" on YouTube w. Frank Lebby Stanton & m. Oley Speaks as sung by Webster Booth
- "Morning" on YouTube w. Frank Lebby Stanton & m. Oley Speaksas sung by Tessa Folch
- "Morning" on YouTube w. Frank Lebby Stanton & m. Oley Speaks as sung by Jan Peerce
- "Morning" on YouTube w. Frank Lebby Stanton & m. Oley Speaks as sung by Eleanor Steber
- "Morning" on Richard Tucker
- Encyclopedia Americana. 1920. .
- Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Frank Lebby Stanton papers, 1885-1978