90px|Nathaniel Parker Willis

Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867) was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. For a time, he was the employer of former slave and future writer Harriet Jacobs. Born in Portland, Maine, Willis came from a family of publishers. He developed an interest in literature while attending Yale College and began publishing poetry. After graduation, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the New York Mirror. He eventually moved to New York and began to build his literary reputation. In 1846, he started his own publication, the Home Journal, which was eventually renamed Town & Country. Shortly after, Willis moved to a home on the Hudson River where he lived a semi-retired life until his death in 1867. Willis embedded his own personality into his writing and addressed his readers personally, specifically in his travel writings, so that his reputation was built in part because of his character. Critics, including his sister in her novel Ruth Hall, occasionally described him as being effeminate and Europeanized. Despite his intense popularity for a time, at his death Willis was nearly forgotten. (more...)

Recently featured: Blackbeard – Canoe River train crash – M-6

Archive – By email – More featured articles...

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Parker_Willis

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1867:

The Manchester Martyrs were hanged in Manchester, England, for killing a police officer while assisting two Irish nationalists, who had played important roles in the failed Fenian Rising, to escape from custody. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Martyrs

1876:

William "Boss" Tweed, a major New York City politician who had been arrested for embezzlement, was handed to US authorities after having escaped from prison to Spain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Tweed

1934:

An Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission in the Ogaden encountered a garrison of Somalis in Italian service at Walwal, which led to the Abyssinia Crisis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyssinia_Crisis

1996:

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was hijacked by three Ethiopians seeking political asylum, then crashed into the Indian Ocean near Comoros after running out of fuel, killing 125 of the 175 people on board. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961

2005:

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was declared the winner of the Liberian general election, making her the first democratically elected female head of state of an African country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Johnson-Sirleaf

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

labyrinthine (adj): 1. Physically resembling a labyrinth; with the qualities of a maze. 2. Twisting, convoluted, baffling, confusing, perplexing http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/labyrinthine

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. --John Milton http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Milton