Lanier was born in 1842 and raised in Macon, Georgia, the son of R. Sampson Lanier, a lawyer, and Mary Jane Anderson Lanier. His family enjoyed a long tradition of involvement in music and the arts, and Lanier read much of his family's extensive library before attending Oglethrope College, a local Presbyterian institution, in 1857. At school he came under the tutelage of Professor James Woodrow, a natural scientist educated at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Woodrow encouraged his protege's interest in the German Romantic writers and fostered in Lanier an enthusiasm for nature and science that would inform his poetry and criticism. Following graduation, Lanier first wanted to earn a doctorate at Heidelberg University, but the outbreak of the Civil War obliged him to join the Macon Volunteers, a company of Confederate Army soldiers. During his service, Lanier developed tuberculosis, a condition that left him in poor...