Sidney Lanier

He became a flautist and sold poems to publications. He eventually became a professor of literature at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and is known for his adaptation of musical meter to poetry. Many schools, other structures and two lakes are named for him, and he became hailed in the South as the "poet of the Confederacy". A 1972 US postage stamp honored him as an "American poet".

Sidney Lanier studied at Johns Hopkins University and Oglethorpe University. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is poetry, music and prose. Employment is recorded with Johns Hopkins University and Oglethorpe University. Works named in the authority record are Baby Charley and May, the Maiden.

• Name — Sidney Lanier • Birth Name — Sidney Clopton Lanier • Born — 3 February 1842 • Birthplace — Macon, Georgia, U.S. • Died — 7 September 1881 • Place of death — Lynn, North Carolina, U.S. • Resting Place — Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland • Occupation — * Poet • musician • academic • Period — 1867–1881 • Children — 3 • Parents — Robert S. Lanier (father)

Sidney Clopton Lanier was born February 3, 1842, in Macon, Georgia, to parents Robert Sampson Lanier and Mary Jane Anderson. On his father's side he was descended of French Huguenots. His middle name, "Clopton", was in honor of David Clopton, a former classmate of his father's. He began playing the flute at an early age, and his love of that musical instrument continued throughout his life. He attended Oglethorpe University, which at the time was near Milledgeville, Georgia, and he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He graduated first in his class shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War. He returned to Oglethorpe the next year, as a tutor, and befriended Milton Harlow Northrup, a New York native, who was a conductor at the school. During the war, he served in the Confederate Signal Corps, primarily in the tidewater region of Virginia. Later, he and his brother Clifford served as pilots aboard English blockade runners, and Lanier's ship, the Lucy, was captured by the USS Santiago de Cuba, on November 3, 1864. He was incarcerated in a military prison at Point Lookout in Maryland, where he contracted tuberculosis (generally known as "consumption" at the time). He suffered greatly from this disease, then incurable and usually fatal, for the rest of his life.

Shortly after the war, he taught school briefly, then moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where he worked as a night clerk at the Exchange Hotel (a hotel partly owned by his grandfather; his brother Clifford also worked there and became a part owner after the war), and also performed as a musician. He was the regular organist at the First Presbyterian Church in nearby Prattville. He wrote his only novel, Tiger Lilies (1867), while in Alabama. • Illustration — Sidney Lanier This novel was partly autobiographical, describing a stay in 1860 at his grandfather's Montvale Springs resort hotel near Knoxville, Tennessee. In 1867, he moved to Prattville, at that time a small town just north of Montgomery, where he taught at a small school. He married Mary Day of Macon in 1867 and moved back to his hometown, where he began working in his father's law office. After passing the Georgia bar, Lanier practiced as a lawyer for several years. During this period he wrote a number of lesser poems, using the "cracker" and "negro" dialects of his day, about poor white and black farmers in the Reconstruction South. He traveled extensively through southern and eastern portions of the United States in search of a cure for his tuberculosis. While on one such journey in Texas, he rediscovered his native and untutored talent for the flute and decided to travel to the northeast in hopes of finding employment as a musician in an orchestra. Unable to find work in New York City, Philadelphia, or Boston, he signed on to play flute for the Peabody Orchestra in Baltimore, Maryland, shortly after its organization. He taught himself musical notation and quickly rose to the position of first flautist. He was famous in his day for his performances of a personal composition for the flute called "Black Birds", which mimics the song of that species. In an effort to support Mary and their three sons, he also wrote poetry for magazines. His most famous poems were "Corn" (1875), "The Symphony" (1875), "Centennial Meditation" (1876), "The Song of the Chattahoochee" (1877), "The Marshes of Glynn", (1878) "A Sunrise Song" (1881), and "Evening Song" (1884). These poems are generally considered his greatest works, and have been set to music by many composers, including Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Grace W. Root. "The Marshes of Glynn" and "A Sunrise Song" are part of an unfinished set of lyrical nature poems known as the "Hymns of the Marshes", which describe the vast, open salt marshes of Glynn County on the coast of Georgia. (The longest bridge in Georgia is in Glynn County and is named for Lanier.)

Later in his short 39-year life, he became a student, lecturer, and, finally, a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, specializing in the works of the English novelists, Shakespeare, the Elizabethan sonneteers, Chaucer, and the Old English poets. He published a book entitled The Science of English Verse (1880) in which he developed a novel theory exploring the connections between musical notation and meter in poetry. In 1883, a posthumous collection of lectures, entitled The English Novel and Its Principle of Development was published. • Illustration — The house in which Lanier died. • Illustration — Memorial stone for Lanier. Lanier finally succumbed to complications caused by his tuberculosis on September 7, 1881, while convalescing with his family near Lynn, North Carolina. He was 39. He is buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.

• Lanier County, Georgia • Sidney Lanier Avenue, residential street, Athens, Georgia • Sidney Lanier Lane, residential street, Greenwich, Connecticut • Lanier Avenue, Fayetteville, Georgia • Lanier Street, residential street, Decatur, Alabama • Lanier Heights, neighborhood, Washington, D.C. • Shelby, NC (one - two seasons for the healing mineral springs in Cleveland County, NC) • (Indirectly) Lanier, which was named for the county.

• Lake Lanier, operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers northeast of Atlanta, Georgia • Lake Lanier in Landrum, South Carolina.

• Sidney Lanier High School in Montgomery, Alabama (The Montgomery County Board of Education voted to close the school in 2024) • Sidney Lanier School in Gainesville, Florida • Lanier University, short-lived university; first Baptist, then owned by the Ku Klux Klan for a year, in Atlanta, Georgia • The Sidney Lanier Building (previously Sidney Lanier Elementary School) on the campus of Glynn Academy, in Brunswick, Georgia • Lanier Middle School in Sugar Hill, Georgia • Lanier High School in Sugar Hill, Georgia • Lanier Elementary School in Gainesville, Georgia • Sidney Lanier Elementary School in Tulsa, Oklahoma • Sidney Lanier High School in Austin, Texas. Renamed to Juan Navarro High School Feb, 2019 • Sidney Lanier Expressive Arts Vanguard Elementary School in Dallas, Texas • Lanier Middle School in Houston, Texas (Now Bob Lanier Middle School after 90 years as Sidney Lanier Middle School) • Lanier High School in San Antonio, Texas • Sidney Lanier Elementary School in Tampa, Florida • Lanier Technical College in Gainesville, Georgia • Katherine Johnson Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia was named Sidney Lanier Middle School for 60 years before being renamed for Johnson in 2021. • Lanier Elementary school in Blount County, Tennessee

• Illustration — Sidney Lanier sat under this oak tree and was inspired to write the poem "The Marshes of Glynn". • Sidney Lanier Cottage, the birthplace of Lanier, in Macon, Georgia • Sidney Lanier Bridge over the South Brunswick River in Brunswick, Georgia • Sidney Lanier Monument, a monument in Piedmont Park in Atlanta • Lanier's Oak in Brunswick, Georgia • The Lanier Library, Tryon, North Carolina. Lanier's widow, Mary, donated two of his volumes of poetry to begin the collection when the library was established in 1890. • Sidney Lanier Camp, Eliot, Maine. • Sidney Lanier Boulevard in Duluth, GA • The Sidney Lanier Suite at The Harwood Cottage at Historic Macon, GA • The World War II Liberty Ship Sidney Lanier was named in his honor. • A 1972 US eight-cent postage stamp: "Sidney Lanier - American poet" • Sidney Lanier Memorial Scholarship at the University of California, Los Angeles • Lanier Island, in the Mackay River in Glynn County, Georgia.

The authorities additionally record the heading Sidney Clopton Lanier. His recorded language was English. He was the child of Robert Sampson Lanier. He married Mary Day Lanier. 2 children are recorded: Henry Wysham Lanier and Sidney Lanier.

Sidney Lanier is recorded as poet, writer, hymnwriter, organist and flautist.

• De Bellis, Jack. Sidney Lanier, Poet of the Marshes, in Southern Literature Series. Atlanta, Ga.: Georgia Humanities Council, 1988. (assigned to the University of Georgia Press). • Fish, Tallu. Sidney Lanier, America's Sweet Singer of Songs. Cynthiana, Ky.: Privately Printed... [for distribution by] Betty Fish Smith, 1988. Without ISBN • Fishburne, Charles C., junior. Sidney Lanier, Poet of the Marshes, Visits Cedar Keys [in] 1875. Cedar Key, Flor.: Sea Hawk Publications, 1986. Without ISBN • Gabin, Jane S. A Living Minstrelsy: The Poetry and Music of Sidney Lanier. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985. • Lamar, May. Brother Sid. Montgomery, AL.: The Donnell Group, 2012.. • Starke, Aubrey Harrison. Sidney Lanier: A Biographical and Critical Study. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1933.