Ridgely Torrence

File:Xenia Buildings.png, Collier Chapel, Shawnee Park, Xenia City Hall, B&O Railroad Caboose]]

Born on November 27, 1874, in Xenia, Ohio, Torrence was the eldest child of Captain David Findley Torrence and Mary Ridgely Torrence.{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/46751024/xenia-writer-gained-fame/ |title=Xenia writer gained fame |date=July 3, 1976 |work=Xenia Daily Gazette |access-date=March 15, 2020 |page=24}}{{efn|His father's name is also expressed as Findley David Torrences.}} His father was a lumber dealer. His grandfather, John Torrence, founded Xenia and Lexington, Kentucky. He had a brother, Findley McDowell Torrence, who attended Harvard University and married a hometown woman, Patricia Broadstone.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AMonAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA409 |title=Harvard College Class of 1910 Fourth Report |date=1921 |publisher=Crimson Printing Company |page=409 |language=en}}

He had tutors while he was growing up and attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, from 1893 to 1895 and transferred to Princeton University.{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/46749261/xenia-born-poet-writes-in-lines-of-pure/ |title=Xenia-Born Poet Writes In Lines Of Pure Beauty |date=November 1, 1952 |work=The Journal Herald |access-date=March 15, 2020 |page=26}} He withdrew from Princeton after he suffered an illness that prevented him from returning to school in 1896.

File:Lenox Library Loeffler.jpg, view from the corner of Fifth Avenue and 70th Street]]

In the late 1890s he settled in Greenwich Village, in New York City, working as a librarian at the Astor Library from 1897 to 1901, and then at Lenox Library until 1903. He was assistant editor at The Critic from 1903 to 1904. He worked for the Japanese special envoy to the United States as a secretary in 1905. He was the fiction editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, from 1905 to 1907.{{Cite web |url=http://www.enotes.com/twentieth-century-criticism/torrence-ridgely |title=Ridgely Torrence Criticism |access-date=June 19, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080821063426/http://www.enotes.com/twentieth-century-criticism/torrence-ridgely |archive-date=August 21, 2008 }}

During his early year in New York, he became part of a circle of poets that included E. A. Robinson, William Vaughn Moody, and Robert Frost.{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rHWqRHJiAlwC&dq=Ridgely+Torrence+new+republic&pg=PA204| title=Robert Frost: A Life| first=Jay |last=Parini| publisher=Macmillan| year=2000| isbn=978-0-8050-6341-7 }} In 1900, he published The House of a Hundred Lights, which Edmund Clarence Stedman helped him revise.{{Cite book |last=Haralson |first=Eric L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KpqsAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA434 |title=Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century |date=January 21, 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-76324-6 |pages=434–436 |language=en}}

The verse plays, showing the influence of John Millington Synge,{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=srqVIZrRxl0C&dq=Ridgely+Torrence+new+republic&pg=PA10| title=The Development of Black Theater in America: From Shadows to Selves| author=Leslie Catherine Sanders| publisher=LSU Press| year=1989| isbn=978-0-8071-1582-4 }} showed realistic portrayals of African Americans, and a revolt against their station in society.{{cite book| chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IKped0j8PXwC&dq=Ridgely+Torrence+house+of+a+hundred&pg=RA1-PA434| title=Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century|editor1=Eric L. Haralson |editor2=John Hollander| publisher=Taylor & Francis| year=1998| isbn=978-1-57958-008-7 | chapter=Frederick Ridgely Torrence }} While his verse dramas were published as books, they were not produced as plays.

In 1914, his one-act play Granny Maumee, which was first performed by a white cast, helped create opportunities for black actors in theaters in America when it was produced with black actors in 1917. It was "one of the first opportunities for serious black actors". Torrence's collection of plays, Three Plays for a Negro Theater premiered in 1917, as a production of the Negro Players.{{cite book | title=A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910-1927 | publisher=Palgrave Macmillan | author=Krassner, David | year=2002 | isbn=978-0-312-29590-5 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/beautifulpageant0000kras }} His work was noteworthy in its blending of compassion and strength.

File:MacDowell Colony.jpg]]

Torrence had fellowships to MacDowell Colony, the artist colony, in 1914, 1917, and then every year from 1942 to 1950.{{Cite web |url=https://www.macdowellcolony.org/artists/ridgely-torrence |title=Ridgely Torrence - Artist |website=MacDowell Colony |language=en |access-date=March 15, 2020}} In 1938, he was poet in residence at Antioch College and in 1941 to 1942, he was Fellow in Creative Writing at Miami University.

He was poetry editor of The New Republic (1920–33), mentoring Louise Bogan.{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SSsaOu2w85UC&dq=Ridgely+Torrence+new+republic&pg=RA1-PA48| title=Louise Bogan: A Portrait| author=Elizabeth Frank| publisher=Columbia University Press| year=1986| isbn=978-0-231-06315-9 }} He organized the National Survey of the Negro Theater (1939), for the Rockefeller Foundation.{{cite book| url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00hami| url-access=registration| page=[https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00hami/page/546 546]| quote=Ridgely Torrence survey negro.| title=The Oxford companion to twentieth-century poetry in English| editor=Ian Hamilton| publisher=Oxford University Press| year=1994| isbn=978-0-19-866147-4 }} The posthumous book Poems, of Torrence's selected poetry, was published in 1952. He chose works that reflected his values, compassion for others, sense of injustice among people, and a faith in mankind.

{{Blockquote|text=I trust the people as I trust the stars.
And if they lose the reckoning they will find it,
For they must learn and by their griefs they will,
Must learn to steer themselves, steer or be steered.|author=Ridgely Torrence, Lincoln's Dream}}

• 1942 Shelley Memorial Award
• 1947 Academy of American Poets' Fellowship

Image:Hassam Washington Arch Spring.jpg, Washington Arch, ca. 1893]]

In 1914, he married author Olivia Howard Dunbar,{{cite web|url=http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2012/09/the-shell-of-sense.html|title=The Shell of Sense|website=storyoftheweek.loa.org|access-date=2 May 2018}} who was a magazine writer, novelist, and reporter for the New York World.{{Cite web |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/46748204/olivia-h-dunbar/ |title=Olivia H. Dunbar |date=January 7, 1953 |website=Lansing State Journal |page=4 |access-date=March 15, 2020}} They lived at Washington Square in Lower Manhattan.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HhfOAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA89 |title=Annual Register of the Alumnae Association of Smith College |date=1915 |page=89 |language=en}}

Torrence died on December 25, 1950, in New York City.{{Cite web |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/46748494/ridgely-torrence-obituary/ |title=Ridgely Torrence obituary |date=December 26, 1950 |website=The Boston Globe |page=11 |access-date=March 15, 2020}} His papers are held at Princeton.{{Cite web |url=https://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/C0172 |title=Ridgely Torrence Papers (C0172) |website=Princeton University - Finding Aids |access-date=March 15, 2020}} Olivia died on January 6, 1953.

• {{cite book| title=The House of a Hundred Lights| url=https://archive.org/details/houseofhundredli00torr| year=1900 |publisher=Small, Maynard}}
• {{cite book| title=Hesperides| publisher=The Macmillan Company| year=1925 }}
• {{cite book| title=Poems | year=1941| publisher=Macmillan }}

• {{cite book| title=El Dorado: A Tragedy| year=1903| url=https://archive.org/details/eldoradoatraged00torrgoog| publisher=John Lane | first=Ridgely | last=Torrence}}
• {{cite book | title=Abelard and Heloise: A Drama| year=1907| url=https://archive.org/details/abelardheloise00torr| publisher=C. Scribner's sons | first=Ridgely | last=Torrence}}
• {{cite book| title=Granny Maumee, The Rider of Dreams, Simon the Cyrenian: Plays for a Negro Theater| publisher=The Macmillan company| year=1917| url=https://archive.org/details/grannymaumeerid00torrgoog| first=Ridgely | last=Torrence}}

• {{cite book| title=Modern American Poetry| year=1941| chapter=The Bird and the Tree| editor=Louis Untermeyer| url=http://www.bartleby.com/104/68.html }}
• {{cite book| title=The Little Book of Modern Verse| year=1917| chapter=The Lesser Children| editor=Jessie B. Rittenhouse| url=http://www.bartleby.com/267/148.html }}

• {{cite book| title=The story of John Hope| url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.89869| publisher=Macmillan Co.| year=1948 }}
• {{cite book| title=Selected letters of Edwin Arlington Robinson|author=Edwin Arlington Robinson | editor=Ridgely Torrence| publisher=The Macmillan company| year=1940 }}

{{Notelist}}

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1357375/Ridgely-Torrence "Ridgely Torrence." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 19 Jun. 2009]
• {{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NgIYlUbaoAoC&dq=Ridgely+Torrence+granny&pg=PA1177| title=Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance| editor1=Cary D. Wintz |editor2= Paul Finkelman| publisher=Taylor & Francis| year=2004| isbn=978-1-57958-458-0 }}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Ridgely Torrence}}
• {{find a Grave|47386449}}
• [http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/pacscl/detail.html?id=PACSCL_PRIN_MUDD_C0172USNjP Ridgely Torrence Papers] at [https://library.princeton.edu/special-collections/ Princeton University Library Special Collections]
• {{Librivox author |id=9244}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Torrence, Ridgely}}

Category:1874 births

Category:1950 deaths

Category:American male poets

Category:20th-century American dramatists and playwrights

Category:People from Xenia, Ohio

Category:American magazine editors

Category:American male dramatists and playwrights

Category:Journalists from Ohio

Category:American male non-fiction writers