Strangers to Us All Lawyers and Poetry

James Mathewes Legaré

(1823-1859)
South Carolina

"JAMES MATHEWES LEGARÉ was born at Charleston, November 26, 1823, and died at Aiken, South Carolina, March 30, 1859. He was a relative of Hugh S. Legaré and descended from Scotch and Hugenot stock. He studied law and practised it with moderate success in Charleston. His heart was more given to literature, and he contributed poems and prose articles from time to time to several magazines. He patented several inventions which failing health prevented him from fully developed." [See: George Armstrong Wauchope, The Writers of South Carolina: With a Critical Introduction, Biographical Sketches, and Selections in Prose and Verse 249 (Columbia, South Carolina: The State Co., Publishers, 1910)]

Curtis Carrol Davis, the most notable authority on Legaré, provides the following biographical sketch:

After attending the Grammar and English schools, and the . . . College of Charleston until 1842, the youth completed his formal education by journeying up to Baltimore, where he spent a little over a year—from March, 1842, through July, 1843—at St. Mary's College, now St. Mary's University and Seminary . . . . The records reveal that Legaré studied the ancient and modern languages, as well as mathematics and chemistry; and at the commencement held July 18, 1843, though he did not graduate, he received an honorary certificate, and won premiums in the individual subjects of rhetoric, natural history, astronomy, Spanish, German, and painting in oil—interests in most of which can be readily traced in the poet's later work. . . . By July 24, via the steampacket Gladiator, Legaré was back inCharleston. There he toop up the study of law, for an indeterminate period, in the offices of James L. Petigru. Probably from disinclination, as well as for reasons of health, he did not continue in this field, and eventually centered his career round the writing of both fiction and verse, with a liberal admixture of interest in textiles and mechanical invention.

[Curtis Carroll Davis, A Letter from the Muses: The Publication and Critical Reception of James M. Legaré's "Orta-Undis, and Other Poems" (1848), 26 (4) North Carolina Historical Review 417, 419-420 (1949)]

James M. Legare (1823-1859)
Department of English, Coastal Carolina University

Poetry

J. M. Legaré, Orta-Undis and Other Poems (Boston: W.D. Ticknor & Co., 1848) [online text]

Bibliography

Curtis Davis, That Ambitious Mr. Legare: The Life of James M. Legare of South Carolina, Including a Collected Edition of His Verse (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971)

Curtis Carroll Davis, A Letter from the Muses: The Publication and Critical Reception of James M. Legaré's "Orta-Undis, and Other Poems" (1848), 26 (4) North Carolina Historical Review 417 (1949)

_______________, Poet, Painter and Inventor: Some Letters by James Mathewes Legaré, 1823-1859, 21 North Carolina Historical Review 218 (July, 1944)

Research Resources

James Mathewes Legaré Papers
Duke University Library
Durham, North Carolina