J. G. Holland Quote

Josiah Gilbert Holland (July 24, 1819 – October 12, 1881) was an American novelist, essayist, poet and spiritual mentor to the Nation in the years following the Civil War. Born in Western Massachusetts, he was “the most successful man of letters in the United States” in the latter half of the nineteenth century and sold more books in his lifetime than Mark Twain did in his.
Known often by his initials “J.G.,” Holland penned the first biography of Abraham Lincoln just months after his assassination, which was a bestseller. Holland was the first to publish the first known poem written by an African American.
One of Holland’s novels was among the earliest examples of the genre that became literary realism. He published a few poems of Emily Dickinson’s in the newspaper that he edited. Holland and his wife, Elizabeth Chapin Holland, were close friends with her.
Holland became a popular Lyceum lecturer and wrote advice essays under the pseudonym Timothy Titcomb as well as lyrics to hymns, including the beloved Methodist Christmas tune "There's a Song in the Air.” He helped establish and was editor of the middle-class flagship magazine Scribner's Monthly.
Though Holland was a contemporary of the canonical and more renowned poet Walt Whitman and the novelist Herman Melville, neither “ever tasted the sweets of success as Holland did, perhaps, because neither wrote what the nation’s readers cared so much about.” His writings are quoted by politicians and pastors alike though few today recognize Holland’s name.