Horace Gregory
Horace Victor Gregory was an American poet, translator, and literary critic born on April 10, 1898, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Despite facing significant health challenges in his childhood, including a debilitating spinal disease, Gregory cultivated a deep love for literature, thanks in part to his family's influence. He pursued higher education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he began writing and translating classical poetry. In 1923, he moved to New York City, where he faced recurrent health issues. He married fellow poet Marya Zaturenska in 1925, who would later win a Pulitzer Prize. Gregory's notable works include his poetry collections, such as "Chelsea Rooming House" and "No Retreat," as well as translations of classical texts like Catullus and Ovid. He had a long academic career at Sarah Lawrence College, contributing significantly to the literary community through his writings on poetry and biography. Gregory passed away on March 11, 1982, leaving behind a legacy that includes acclaimed poetry, literary criticism, and collaborative works.
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Subject Terms
Horace Gregory
Poet
- Born: April 10, 1898
- Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Died: March 11, 1982
- Place of death: Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts
Biography
Horace Victor Gregory, poet, translator, and literary critic, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on April 10, 1898, to Anna Catherine Henckel Gregory and Henry Bolton Gregory. As a child, Gregory suffered tuberculosis of the spine, which left him with a tremor and partial paralysis for the rest of his life; however, his convalescence also left him with a great deal of time for reading. His parents owned a successful business, and they, along with others in Gregory’s family, were highly influential in interesting him in books and the theater.
In 1918 Gregory entered the German English Academy, later renamed the Milwaukee University School. A year later he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and graduated in 1923. He began to write while in college, where he studied Latin and began to translate Catullus; his first published poems appeared in the Chicago journal Poetry in the early 1920’s. After moving to New York City in 1923, Gregory became severely ill, and even after he recovered his recurrent illnesses kept him moving through a series of jobs. While in New York, he met fellow poet Marya Zaturenska, who had also attended college in Madison; they married on August 21, 1925, and had two children, a girl and a boy. Zaturenska won a Pulitzer Prize in 1938.
Gregory’s first published collection of poems was a critical success. Chelsea Rooming House (1930), republished in 1932 as Rooming House, contained a number of the elegiac monologues for which Gregory became known. On the strength of the book Gregory was invited to the Yaddo writing colony, where he completed his next poetry volume, No Retreat, published in 1933. He began teaching at Sarah Lawrence College in 1934, and he remained there until his retirement in 1960. In addition to his own work, Gregory translated the poetry of Catullus and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He also wrote a book of literary criticism on D. H. Lawrence, and he and his wife collaborated on A History of American Poetry: 1900-1940 (1946). He also wrote biographies of Amy Lowell and James McNeill Whistler.
Gregory’s Collected Poems appeared in 1964, along with his translation of Ovid: Love Poems. The Collected Poems received the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1965. Gregory’s essays were collected in The Shield of Achilles (1944), The Dying Gladiators (1961), and Spirit of Time and Place (1973). He also wrote a critically praised but neglected autobiography, The House on Jefferson Street: A Cycle of Memories (1971), and edited numerous anthologies. Gregory died in a nursing home in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, on March 11, 1982, just two months after the death of his wife. His own poetry, his translations, and his literary criticism continue to find a reading public.