Donald Grant Mitchell ("Ik Marvel")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Grant_Mitchell

Donald Grant Mitchell ("Ik Marvel") (April 12, 1822 - December 15, 1908) was an American essayist and novelist.

Biography

Mitchell, the grandson of politician and jurist Stephen Mix Mitchell, was born in Norwich, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale College in 1841, where he was a member of Skull and Bones and studied law, but he soon took up literature. Throughout his life he showed a particular interest in agriculture and landscape gardening, which he followed at first in pursuit of health. He served as U.S. consul at Venice, Italy, from 1853 to 1854, and in 1855 he settled at his estate, called Marvelwood, near New Haven, Connecticut.

He was best known as the author (under the pseudonym of "Ik Marvel") of the sentimental essays contained in the volumes Reveries of a Bachelor, or a Book of the Heart (first published in book form in 1850) and Dream Life, a Fable of the Seasons (1851). Reveries of a Bachelor examines the dream-like lives Americans were living at the time. It was one of the top best sellers of its time but has received little attention from 19th century literary critics. In the text, Ik Marvel theorizes on boyhood, country life style, marriage, travel, and dreaming. Soon after, the book was published in a magazine and can now be found in digital text. The latter book, "Dream Life, a Fable of the Seasons", was dedicated to Washington Irving, to whom Mitchell was introduced by Lewis Gaylord Clark. Irving said of the dedication: "Though I have a great disinclination in general to be the object of literary oblations and compliments... I have enjoyed your writings with such peculiar relish and have been so drawn toward the author by the qualities of head and heart evinced in them, that I confess I feel gratified by the dedication".[1] Mitchell produced books of travel, volumes of essays on rural themes, including Reveries of a Bachelor (1850), My Farm of Edgewood: A Country Book (1863), sketchy studies of English monarchs and of English and American literature, and a character novel entitled Doctor Johns (1866). His other works include About Old Story-tellers (1878) and American Lands and Letters (1897–1899).

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., called him "one of the pleasantest of our American writers."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Grant_Mitchell#Bibliography
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MITCHELL, Donald Grant, author, was born in Norwich, Conn., April 12, 1822; son of Alfred and Lucretia (Woodbridge) Mitchell, and grandson of the Hon. Stephen Mix Mitchell. His father (born 1790, died 1831), was graduated from Yale in 1809, and was a Congregational minister in Norwich, Connecticut. Donald attended the academy at Ellington, Connecticut, kept by Judge John Hall, and was graduated from Yale in 1841. He was editor of the Yale Literary Magazine, and was elected to deliver the farewell class address.

His health being feeble, he worked on the (so-called) Woodbridge farm of his maternal grandfather, in Salem, Connecticut, 1841-44, and thus acquired a taste for agriculture. He won a silver medal from the New York Agricultural society for plans of farm buildings, and subsequently became connected with the Albany Cultivator (now the Country Gentleman), as foreign correspondent. He spent two years (1844-46) in travel on the continent and in England, gathering material for his first book, "Fresh Gleanings." Returning to America in the latter part of 1846, he spent some months in travel through the Southern states and in Washington.

In the winter of 1847-48 he entered upon the study of law in a New York office, but unable to bear the confinement involved, he sailed again for Europe shortly after the outbreak of the revolution of 1848; his second book, "The Battle Summer," relates to this period. In 1849-50 he published, anonymously: "The Lorgnette "—a book of social studies in satirical vein. In May, 1853, he was appointed by President Pierce, U.S. Consul at Venice, and before leaving for his post he married, May 31, 1853, Mary F., daughter of William B. Pringle of Charleston, S.C.

On their return in 1855 they established a home on a farm near New Haven, which they called "Edgewood," and where Mrs. Mitchell died Dec. 5, 1901. Mr. Mitchell was elected a member of the council of Yale Art School in 1865; was judge of industrial art at the Centennial exhibition of 1876, and U.S. commissioner to the Paris exhibition of 1878. He was lecturer on English literature at Yale University, 1884-85, and the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by that institution in 1878. He edited, in connection with Dr. Holmes, the Atlantic Almanac in Boston, 1868-69, and later was connected editorially with the Hearth and Home in New York.

He is the author of: Fresh Gleanings, or a New Sheaf from the Old Field of Continental Europe (1847); The Battle Summer (1849); The Lorgnette, or Studies of the Town by an Opera Goer (2 vols., 1850); The Reveries of a Bachelor (1850)—the first chapter having been originally published in the Southern Literary Messenger under the title, A Bachelor's Reverie (1849):— Dream Life (1851); My Farm of Edgewood (1868); Seven Stories with Basement and Attic (1864); Wet Days at Edgewood (1865); Dr. Johns: Being a Narrative of Certain Events in the Life of a Congregational Minister of Connecticut (1866); Rural Studies (1867); About Old Story Tellers (1877); Bound Together, which includes Titian and His Times, a lecture delivered before Yale Art school (1884); English Lands, Letters and Kings (4 vols., 1897); and American Lands and Letters (2 vols., 1897-99). He also compiled with his brother Louis an elaborate genealogy of the Woodbridge Family (1883), and Daniel Tyler, a memorial volume (1883). Many of his earlier books were published under the pen name "Ik Marvel."

The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans: Volume VII