Strangers to Us All Lawyers and Poetry

Homer Greene

(1853-1940)
Pennsylvania

"GREENE, Homer, lawyer, b. Ariel, Penn., 1853. A graduate of Union College, and now a resident of Hinesdale, Penn., where he has practised law since 1879. Author of several books of fiction and of occasional poems."

[Source: Edmund Clarence Stedman (ed.), An American Anthology 1787-1899 795 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1900)]

Greene was born on January 10, 1853. He graduated from Union College, June, 1876 with an A.B. and C.E. degrees, and from Albany Law School with an LL.B. in 1877. He was admitted to the Wayne County bar in December, 1878 and took up the practice of law. He served as District Attorney of the county for one term. "His first literary effort was written while a student at the Riverview Military Academy, Poughkeepsie, New York; it was a story entitled 'The Mad Skater,' and was published in Wayne Reid's Magazine Onward for June, 1869. While a student at Union College he contributed liberally both in prose and verse to college literature, and was special correspondent for the New York Evening Post, Albany Evening Journal, Troy Whig, and Albany Argus. 'What My Lover Said,' his best-known poem, was written during his senior year and first published in the New York Evening Post, November 9, 1875, with on the initials 'H.G.' signed to it. [I]t was widely copied and largely credited to Horace Greeley. . . . 'My Daughter Louise' and 'Kitty,' published in Judge Tourgee's disastrous literary venture, The Continent, confirmed his reputation as a poet of the first order. . . . 'She Kissed the Dead,' published in The Christian Union, in 1874 and 'The Rivals,' printed in The Critic, in 1885, have an artist-like finish and are written with great animation and deep feeling."

[Will S. Monroe, Poets and Poetry of the Wyoming Valley 5-6 (Scranton: Lackawanna Institute of History and Science, 1887)(Special Publication No. 2)(reprinted from The Saturday Argus)]

Poem

What My Lover Said

Poetry

Homer Greene, What My Lover Said and Other Poems (Philadelphia: Macrae-Smith Company, 1931)

Writings

Homer Greene, The Blind Brother: A Story of the Pennsylvania Coal Mines (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1887)

___________, Burnham Breaker (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1887)(London: Frederick Warne and Co., 1888)(illus. by A.W. Cooper)

___________, A Tale of the Tow-path (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Co., 1892)

___________, The Riverpark Rebellion (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1892)

___________, Whispering Tongues (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1902)

___________, Pickett's Gap (New York: Macmillan Co., 1907) [online text]

___________, A Lincoln Conscript (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909)(illustrated by T. de Thulstrup)

___________, Handicapped: The Story of a White-Haired Boy (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company / The Riverside Press, 1914)

___________, The Flag (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs, 1917)

___________, The Unhallowed Harvest (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1917) [online text]

___________, The Guardsman (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1919) [online text]

___________, Coal and the Coal Mines (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1928) [online text]

Essays

Homer Greene, Can Lawyers Be Honest, __ North American Review ___ (1891).