Stephen Vincent Benet (July 22, 1898 - March 13, 1943) was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benet is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body (1928), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1936) and "By the Waters of Babylon" (1937). In 2009, The Library of America selected Benet's story "The King of the Cats" (1929) for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales, edited by Peter Straub.


== Life and career ==


=== Early life ===
Benet was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to James Walker Benet, a colonel in the United States Army, and his wife. His grandfather and namesake was a Minorcan descendant born in St. Augustine, Florida, who led the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps, 1874-1891, with the rank of brigadier general; he was a graduate of the United States Military Academy and served in the American Civil War. The younger Benet's paternal uncle, Laurence Vincent Benet, a graduate of Yale, was an ensign in the United States Navy during the Spanish-American War and later manufactured the French-Hotchkiss machine gun.
At about age ten, Benet was sent to the Hitchcock Military Academy. He graduated from The Albany Academy in Albany, New York and Yale University, where he was "the power behind the Yale Lit", according to Thornton Wilder, a fellow member of the Elizabethan Club. He also edited and contributed light verse to campus humor magazine The Yale Record. Benet published his first book at age 17. He was awarded an M.A. in English upon submission of his third volume of poetry in lieu of a thesis. Benet was also a part-time contributor for the early Time magazine.


=== Man of letters ===
Benet helped solidify the place of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition and the Yale University Press during his decade-long judgeship of the competition. Benet published the first volumes of James Agee, Muriel Rukeyser, Jeremy Ingalls, and Margaret Walker. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1931.
Benet's fantasy short story about a devil, The Devil and Daniel Webster (1936) won an O. Henry Award. He furnished the material for Scratch, a one-act opera by Douglas Moore. The story was filmed in 1941 and shown originally under the title All That Money Can Buy. Benet also wrote a sequel, Daniel Webster and the Sea Serpent, in which the man Daniel Webster encounters the Leviathan of biblical legend.
Benet maintained a home (commonly referred to as Benet House), in Augusta, Georgia. Part of Augusta College (now Georgia Regents University), it was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1971. Benet House, now on the Summerville Campus of Georgia Regents University, was originally part of the Augusta Arsenal. Benet's father, Col James Walker Benet, along with his wife and daughter, lived in this house while he was the commanding officer of the Augusta Arsenal from approximately August 1911 to February 1919. Stephen Vincent Benet would have visited his parents while they were resident. The local newspaper considered it newsworthy enough to congratulate Benet on winning the Maysfield Prize for best undergraduate poem while Benet attended Yale.(Augusta Chronicle 1/21/1917 p. 21) Benet House was the name assigned to the building when it became the property of Augusta College. Once the residence of the college president, it now serves as space for administrative offices. Benet House was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1971.


=== Death and legacy ===
Benet died of a heart attack in New York City, on March 13, 1943, at the age of 44 and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Stonington, Connecticut, where he had owned the historic Amos Palmer House. He was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for Western Star, an unfinished narrative poem on the settling of the United States.
The title of Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a history of Native Americans in the American West in the late nineteenth century, is taken from the final phrase of Benet's poem "American Names". The full quotation, "I shall not be there/I shall rise and pass/Bury my heart at Wounded Knee," appears at the beginning of Brown's book. Although Benet's poem is not about the plight of native Americans, Wounded Knee, (a village on a reservation in South Dakota) was the location of last major confrontation between the U.S. Army and American Indians. The event is known formally as the Wounded Knee Massacre, as more than 150, largely unarmed, Sioux men, women, and children were killed that day.
He adapted the Roman myth of the rape of the Sabine Women into the story "The Sobbin' Women". It was adapted as the movie musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
His play John Brown's Body was staged on Broadway in 1953, in a three-person dramatic reading featuring Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson, and Raymond Massey, and directed by Charles Laughton. The book of the same name was included in Life Magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924-1944.
Benet fathered three children: Thomas, Stephanie, and Rachel. His brother, William Rose Benet, was a poet, anthologist and critic who is largely remembered for his desk reference Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia (1948). His sister Laura Benet was also an author.


== Selected works ==
Five Men and Pompey, a series of dramatic portraits, Poetry, 1915
The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun (Yale University Prize Poem), 1917
Young Adventure: A book of Poems, 1918
Heavens and Earth, 1920
The Beginnings of Wisdom: A Novel, 1921
Young People's Pride: A Novel, 1922
Jean Huguenot: A Novel, 1923
The Ballad of William Sycamore: A Poem, 1923
King David: A two-hundred-line ballad in six parts, 1923
Nerves, 1924 (A play, with John Farrar)
That Awful Mrs. Eaton, 1924 (A play, with John Farrar)
Tiger Joy: A Book of Poems, 1925
The Mountain Whippoorwill: How Hill-Billy Jim Won the Great Fiddler's Prize: A Poem., 1925
Spanish Bayonet: A Short Story, 1926
John Brown's Body, 1928
The Barefoot Saint: A Short Story, 1929
The Litter of Rose Leaves: A Short Story, 1930
Abraham Lincoln, 1930 (screenplay with Gerrit Lloyd)
Ballads and Poems, 1915-1930, 1931
A Book of Americans, 1933 (with Rosemary Carr Benet, his wife)
James Shore's Daughter: A Novel, 1934
The Burning City, 1936 (includes 'Litany for Dictatorships')
The Magic of Poetry and the Poet's Art, 1936
By the Waters of Babylon, 1937
The Headless Horseman: one-act play, 1937
Thirteen O'Clock, 1937
Johnny Pye and the Fool Killer: A Short Story, 1938
Tales Before Midnight: Collection of Short Stories, 1939
The Ballad of the Duke's Mercy, 1939
Elementals, 1940-41 (broadcast)
Freedom's Hard-Bought Thing, 1941 (broadcast)
Listen to the People, 1941
A Summons to the Free, 1941
Cheers for Miss Bishop, 1941 (screenplay with Adelaide Heilbron, Sheridan Gibney)
Selected Works, 1942 (2 vols.)
Short Stories, 1942
Nightmare at Noon: Short Poem, 1942 (in The Treasury Star Parade, ed. by William A. Bacher)
A Child is Born, 1942 (broadcast)
They Burned the Books, 1942
They Burned the Books, 1942 (broadcast)
These works were published posthumously:
Western Star, 1943 (unfinished)
Twenty Five Short Stories, 1943
America, 1944
O'Halloran's Luck and Other Short Stories, 1944
We Stand United, 1945 (radio scripts)
The Bishop's Beggar, 1946
The Last Circle, 1946
Selected Stories, 1947
From the Earth to the Moon, 1958


== References ==


== Sources ==
Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. pp. 46-47. 
Fenton, Charles A. (1978) [1958]. Stephen Vincent Benet: The Life and Times of an American Man of Letters, 1898-1943. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-20200-1. 


== External links ==
Works by Stephen Vincent Benet at Project Gutenberg
Works by Stephen Vincent Benet at Project Gutenberg Australia
Works by or about Stephen Vincent Benet at Internet Archive
Works by Stephen Vincent Benet at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) 
Borough of Fountain Hill Official Web Site
Works by Stephen Vincent Benet (public domain in Canada)
Stephen Vincent Benet at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Stephen Vincent Benet at Find a Grave