Moody, William Vaughn, 1869-1910

American poet, playwright and teacher.

Playwright and poet.

William Vaughn Moody [1869-1910], American poet, play write and teacher, studied painting at the Pritchett Institute of Design in 1885, and did college preparatory work in classics at the Riverview Academy in 1887 before entering Harvard in 1889. He graduated second in his class in 1893. Moody published his first poems in the Harvard Monthly, and while at Harvard became friends with Daniel G. Mason, George Santayana, Norman Hapgood, Robert Herrick, and Robert Morss Lovett. He received his M.A. from Harvard in 1894 and taught English literature there during 1894-5.

In Autumn of 1895, he joined the English faculty of the University of Chicago as Instructor in English and Rhetoric; as Assistant Professor in English and Rhetoric, Moody conducted his last classes at the University in Winter Quarter of 1903--although he remained "on leave" until his formal resignation in 1908. At Chicago Moody continued his friendships with Herrick and Lovett and established ties with Ferdinand Schevill, John M. Manly, Hamlin Garland, Harriet Monroe, and Mrs. Harriet Brainard [nee Harriet Converse Tilden] who later became his wife.

In 1901--the year after he met Mrs. Brainard--his volume of Poems appeared. The next year saw the publication of A History of English Literature co-authored by Robert Morss Lovett; in 1905 Lovett and Moody published A First View of English Literature. In October of 1906, Moody's play The Great Divide opened in New York; it was a great success and ran for two years. Before his early death in 1910, Moody was considered one of America's leading poets and perhaps her most promising playwright--a judgment sustained until the 1920's. He was honored by Yale University in 1908 when he received the D. Litt. In May 1909, Moody and Harriet Brainard were married; because of his health they settled in Southern California in December of that year. Moody's last prose play The Faith Healer opened in New York in January 1910. On October 17, 1910, Moody died of a brain tumor in Colorado.