RARE “America’s Greatest Sonneteer\" Lloyd Mifflin Hand Written Letter For Sale

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RARE “America’s Greatest Sonneteer\" Lloyd Mifflin Hand Written Letter:
$349.99

Up for sale a RARE! "America’s Greatest Sonneteer" Lloyd Mifflin Hand Written 3 Page Letter Dated 1911. 

ES-3984

Lloyd Mifflin (1846-1921), artist of landscape

and portraiture, was also “America’s greatest sonneteer.”  He was born and

lived much of his life in Columbia, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania where he was

free to wander the banks of the Susquehanna River and its tributaries. His

father, J. Huston Mifflin, of English Quaker descent, was Lloyd’s first teacher

in drawing and sketching.  His mother, Elizabeth A. Heise, came from

German heritage.  She was born in Columbia and died when Lloyd was very

young.  His father, a kind and patient man, noted that Lloyd was a rather

weak child and provided equestrian and water sports to improve his health. Lloyd

was taught in the public schools in Columbia, including the Washington

Classical Institute.  The Mifflin family supported local education by

bequeathing two houses from their estate, the cottage known as “Norwood” and

the grand house, “Cloverton,” as well as the estate itself.  The school

district annually planted a flower on his birthday, September 15, and read one

of his sonnets, “A Picture of My Mother.” At the age of 14, Lloyd undertook

drawing and sketching with his father.  He also had Thomas Moran as an

instructor in painting and worked with Isaac Williams of Philadelphia for a

short time.  In 1869, he traveled to Europe where he studied with Henry

Herzog at Dusseldorf, Germany. His adventures also took him to Italy, France,

England, and Scotland.  He returned to Columbia from Europe and continued

painting scenes from along the Susquehanna—from Cooperstown, NY to the

Chesapeake Bay.  As did most other painters of the time, he earned money

from portraiture. In his paintings, he captured the natural with refined color

and light, which yielded firm and balanced forms.  He preferred to capture

the peacefulness of a woodland path or other quiet spots, rather than the noise

of an industrial area.  Later in his life he liked seasonal paintings,

since they gave him a chance to probe deeper into a philosophical spirit. Mifflin

turned to poetry at the age of 51.  According to what he wrote in The

Hills, his first volume of poetry (1896), he claimed that the fumes of the

paint made him sick.  In his lifetime he filled twelve books of verse with

two hundred poems and more than six hundred sonnets.  He wrote more sonnets

than William Shakespeare, John Milton, and William Wordsworth.  John

Keats, however, was his favorite.  He preferred Keats for his expression

regarding the love of beauty, both real and ideal; his forms were always poised

and dignified.  During this time he also taught himself the art of

etching, using this technique to illustrate The Hills. Mifflin stressed a

strong love of beauty in his poetry as he did in his painting.  His

imagination and beautiful sense of harmony characterize his verse.  The

main source of his ambition, inspiration and consolation are clearly seen in

The Invocation. He devoted his greatest efforts to the category of the sonnet,

considering it the most distinguished and exalted of all forms of English

poetry.  He enjoyed the structure, the metrical and rhythmic beauty, the

plan of metrical rhyme and diction.  Mifflin found it much like a musical

composition. Sonnets bipartite in structure, usually have a combination of

eight lines, followed by six.  The rhyme schemes and diction, include many

metaphors and an extensive vocabulary.  His one hundred and fifty nature

sonnets emphasize the descriptive, not the intuitional.  To sample his

poetic styles, one should turn to his three hundred and fifty collected

sonnets, published in 1905 with a second edition in 1907.  A large number

came from earlier books. As a poet, Mifflin was an idealist and respected the

ideal of Greek mythological beauty.  In the Echoes of the Greek Idylls and

Slopes of Helicon, we find no roughness of spirit.  There was a conscience

of a spiritual presence.  His religious sonnets were grounded in the faith

of a personal God which related more to his aesthetic feelings than to

traditional Christianity.  Themes of life and death occur in many

sonnets.  His poetry inspired faith, hope and deep emotion.  These

sonnets were more descriptive than philosophical. Mifflin's personal ambition

was to excel; he wanted to write the perfect sonnet.  Like the classical

Greeks, he hoped his poetry would obtain an immortality.  Mifflin thought the

world had largely ignored him, even though his poetry received high

praise.  At his life’s end he changed his opinion and credited his readers

with more accolades than he had earlier thought.  Perhaps he was too hard

on himself.  Lloyd Mifflin carried the name “Hermit of the hills” who

walked the ‘world as one entranced’ and ‘in life’s turoffer wave’, dropped ‘ the

crown-jewel of his melody.’”

RARE “America’s Greatest Sonneteer" Lloyd Mifflin Hand Written Letter

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