Inman, Arthur Crew, 1895-1963

Poet and dramatist.

Lived at diffferent times in Atlanta, Georgia and Boston, Massachusetts.

Arthur Crew Inman was born to Henry Arthur and Roberta Sutherland (Crew) Inman in Atlanta, Georgia. He is best known today as the author of The Inman Diary: A Public and Private Confession, though he was primarily known in his own time as a poet, publishing twelve volumes of poems that failed to attract critical attention. A member of a prominent Southern family, he also edited the letters of Confederate General George Edward Pickett for publication.

Of himself, Inman wrote, "As for my own life, here are the main facts. I was born in Atlanta on May 11, 1895, I went to school to Miss Emma Tuller in Atlanta first, then to the Donald Fraser school in Decatur. After that, I went to boarding school outside of Philadelphia, and to Haverford College at Haverford, Pennsylvania. During my junior year at college I was taken ill, and was obliged to leave college for good. That was in 1916, and I have been forced to be rather saving of my physical strength since then. Until recently, most of the summers were spent at Southwest Harbor, Maine. And since 1917, I have made Boston my headquarters, with occasional trips to New York. In 1923, I was married to Evelyn Yates of Washington, D. C., a Wellesley graduate. Mrs. Inman travels to a considerable extent, but I have not done so for the last ten or twelve years, on the theory that the game is not worth the candle."

As these lines reveal, Inman was something of a troubled soul. He had many deep eccentricities, and after 1916 lived largely as a recluse in Boston. He died by his own hand on December 5, 1963.

Source: Gale Biography Resource Center.