Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Stephen Vincent Benét was the son of James Walker Benét, a career military officer, and his wife, Frances Neill Rose Benét. The travels of the family during Benét's early life nurtured a broad and resilient national consciousness that is the basis of much of his most important work in poetry and the novel as well as in the short story. His parents also fostered a strong interest in history and encouraged the open-minded exploration of books and ideas, but against a background of firm professionalism. "I don't want any of my kids," the elder Benét once said, "to be amateurs." Thus it hardly seems surprising that from an early age Benét took his writing very seriously and published his first book at the age of seventeen, in the same year that he...