Robert Williams Buchanan (18 August 1841 – 10 June 1901) was a Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist. Several of his works were adapted into films.
Contents
Early life and education
He was the son of Robert Buchanan (1813–1866), Owenite lecturer and journalist, and was born at Caverswall, Staffordshire, England. Buchanan senior, a native of Ayr, Scotland, lived for some years in Manchester, then moved to Glasgow, where Buchanan junior was educated, at the high school and the university, one of his fellow-students being the poet David Gray. His essay on Gray, originally published in the Cornhill Magazine, tells the story of their close friendship, and of their journey to London in 1860 in search of fame.
His friend, Scottish-American poet James Mackintosh Kennedy, wrote in Scottish and American Poems: "Robert Buchanan, the well-known British poet and most genial and variously gifted man, visited America in 1884-85." He wrote two poems about Buchanan: "Lament" on his departure, and "Robert Buchanan" upon his death. Kennedy's son, born in 1885, was named Robert Buchanan Kennedy.
Writings
Buchanan's first published works were books of poetry written while he was still living in Glasgow. He appears to have disowned them later in life as they fail to appear in any bibliographic references. His first book was Poems and Love Lyrics which although undated was probably published in 1857. It was reviewed in the Athenaeum in December 1857. Although the review date is not conclusive the date is almost certainly 1857 or 1858 for the following reasons. (1) The author's second book Mary and other Poems is by the 'Author of Lyrics'. This book is dated 1859 and signed Robt W Buchanan in the preface; (2) The preface to 'Mary' states that this is the author's second published book; (3) The preface indicates that the writer is still a young man; (4) The dedication to Hugh Macdonald suggests he was alive when it was written. Macdonald, a well-known Glaswegian, died in 1860. Buchanan's second book Mary and other Poems was published in 1859 and has never been mentioned in any bibliographies. The book is extremely rare and the only copies appear to be in the Mitchell library in Glasgow. Buchanan also published a collection of short stories and poems, written in collaboration with Charles Gibbon, entitled Storm-beaten, or Christmas Eve at the "Old Anchor" Inn in 1862, before Undertones, which is often cited as Buchanan's first book.
After a period of struggle and disappointment Buchanan published Undertones in 1863. This tentative volume had some success, and was followed by Idyls and Legends of Inverburn (1865), London Poems (1866), and North Coast and other Poems (1868), wherein he displayed a faculty for poetic narrative, and a sympathetic insight into the humbler conditions of life.
Buchanan showed more ambition in The Book of Orm: A Prelude to the Epic, a study in mysticism, which appeared in 1870. His works gave him a growing reputation, and raised high hopes of his future. Thereafter he would take up prose fiction and the drama, not always with success. He was a frequent contributor to periodicals, and obtained notoriety as a result of an article which, under the pen name of Thomas Maitland, he contributed to The Contemporary Review for October 1871. Entitled The Fleshly School of Poetry, this article was expanded into a pamphlet (1872), but he subsequently withdrew from the criticisms it contained, and it is chiefly remembered by the replies it evoked from Dante Gabriel Rossetti in a letter to the Athenaeum (16 December 1871), entitled "The Stealthy School of Criticism", and from Algernon Charles Swinburne in Under the Microscope (1872).
Selected articles
(1872). "Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson," The Contemporary Review 21, pp. 45–62.
(1876). "Æschylus and Victor Hugo," The New Quarterly Magazine 5, pp. 263–301.
(1876). "Lucretius and Modern Materialism," The New Quarterly Magazine 6, pp. 1–31.
(1885). "Free Thought in America," The North American Review, No. 341, pp. 316–327.
(1889). "The Modern Young Man as a Critic," The Universal Review 3, pp. 353–372.
Publication in other languages
God and the Man was translated into German by Peter M. Richter as "Christian" (Engelsdorfer Verlag Leipzig, 2007).
Adaptations
Meg Blane: A Rhapsody of the Sea, a cantata for mezzo-soprano, chorus, and orchestra by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, is based on a poem by Buchanan; it was completed in 1902 and premiered to great acclaim that October in Sheffield. Another Buchanan poem "Fra Giacomo" served as the text for a dramatic monologue for baritone and orchestra by Cecil Coles, completed in 1914.
Several films were adapted from his work.