Park Benjamin was a poet, lecturer, and literary agent, but he was also one of the magazine and newspaper editors most typical of New York's "Knickerbocker" era. In this capacity he established a reputation as a practical literary critic, occasionally vicious and acid, but often thoughtful and analytical. As an editor, he introduced the American reading public to much of the best writing of his day; as a critic, he judged work with a consistent goal of elevating general literary taste. In the opinion of one biographer he was "the father of cheap literature in the United States."

The second living son, Benjamin was born in 1809 in Demerara, British Guiana, to Park (or Parke) Benjamin, a New England sea captain and plantation owner, and Mary Judith Gall Benjamin, a planter's daughter. By the age of four, a tropical disease had left him with one weakened leg, a disability...