Though none of his prose or verse has genuine value today, there are three interesting things about the life of Richard Henry Stoddard, which comprised a half-century of poetic effusion, literary journalism, and editorial hackwork. First, he found genteel culture a means of escaping from a boyhood of proletarian penury, finally achieving a sincere testimonial dinner at his beloved Authors Club in 1897. Second, in 1851 he married Elizabeth Barstow and lived for fifty years with a spirited woman of superior mind and personality, whose realistic novels, especially The Morgesons (1861), and tales of New England domestic life tear away genteel masks and reveal psychological depths in eccentric and mordant dialogue. (It is questionable whether Stoddard, who once said his wife had genius, but he more talent, ever read her work with real understanding. Even so, he realized that she "was not cursed by mediocrity," but had "the misfortune to be...