Willis, Nathaniel (1806 - 1867)

Genre: Non-Fiction, Poetry, Short Stories

Editor, journalist and essayist Nathaniel Parker Willis was born in Portland, ME in 1806. He grew up in Portland and Boston, lived for many years in Europe, then returned to the United States and settled in New York.

A member of a family with a history in journalism (his father was a newspaperman in Portland, and his grandfather in Boston), he founded the New York Mirror in 1829. It failed in 1831, but he recreated it in 1844 as the Evening Mirror. In 1846, he left the and started the weekly National Press which quickly became the Home Journal which he continued to edit until his death in 1867. Its name was again changed in 1901 to Town and County and is still in publication.

Selected Bibliography

• Sketches (as N.P. Willis) (1827)
• Poem Delivered Before the Society of United Brothers at Brown University, on the Day Preceding Commencement, September 6, 1831: and Other Poems (1831)
• Melanie and Other Poems (1831)
• Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in France, Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Turkey and England (1844)
• Out-Doors at Idlewild, or, The Shaping of a Home on the Banks of the Hudson (1855)
• The Poems, Sacred, Passionate and Humorous of Nathaniel Parker Willis (1870)