Introduction
Frederic Ridgely Torrence (Nov. 27, 1874 Xenia, Ohio - Dec. 25, 1950 New York City) was an American poet, and editor.
Life
Torrence was the son of Findley David Torrence and Mary Ridgely Torrence. He attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and Princeton University.
In the late 1890s he settled in Greenwich Village, in New York City, working as a librarian and becoming part of a circle of poets that included E. A. Robinson, William Vaughn Moody, and Robert Frost. Edmund Clarence Stedman helped him revise The House of a Hundred Lights.
He was the fiction editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, from 1905 to 1907.
The verse plays, showing the influence of John Millington Synge, showed realistic portrayals of African Americans, and a revolt against their station in society.
In 1914, he married author Olivia Howard Dunbar.
Torrence's collection of plays, Three Plays for a Negro Theater premiered in 1917, as a production of the Negro Players.
He was poetry editor of The New Republic (1920–33), mentoring Louise Bogan. He organized the National Survey of the Negro Theater (1939), for the Rockefeller Foundation.
His papers are held at Princeton.
Awards
- 1942 Shelley Memorial Award
- 1947 Academy of American Poets' Fellowship
Works
Poetry
- The House of a Hundred Lights. Small, Maynard. 1900.
- Hesperides. The Macmillan Company. 1925.
- Poems. Macmillan. 1941.
Theater
- Torrence, Ridgely (1903). El Dorado: A Tragedy. John Lane.
- Torrence, Ridgely (1907). Abelard and Heloise: A Drama. C. Scribner's sons.
- Granny Maumee, The rider of dreams, Simon the Cyrenian: plays for a Negro theater. The Macmillan company. 1917.
Anthologies
- Louis Untermeyer, ed. (1941). "The Bird and the Tree". Modern American Poetry.
- Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1917). "The Lesser Children". The Little Book of Modern Verse.
Non-fiction
- The story of John Hope. Macmillan Co. 1948.
- Edwin Arlington Robinson (1940). Ridgely Torrence, ed. Selected letters of Edwin Arlington Robinson. The Macmillan company.