Edward Coote Pinkney
Edward Coote Pinkney was an American poet born in 1802 in London, and he was the seventh of ten children in his family. His father served as a minister to the English government, and the family spent time in Maryland before returning to England, where Pinkney grew up. He had a modest education but left school at fourteen to join the navy, serving primarily in the Mediterranean. After resigning in 1822 due to conflicts with superiors, he shifted his focus to law and literature. Pinkney gained recognition with his early works, including the poem "Look out upon the Stars, My Love," and the collection "Poems," which featured the influential piece "Rodolph." Despite his untimely death at the age of twenty-five, his contributions were noted by contemporaries, including Edgar Allan Poe, who acknowledged his impact on lyric poetry. His brief but significant literary career left a lasting impression on the poetic landscape of the nineteenth century.
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Subject Terms
Edward Coote Pinkney
Poet
- Born: October 1, 1802
- Birthplace: London, England
- Died: April 11, 1828
- Place of death: Baltimore, Maryland
Biography
Edward Coote Pinkney was born in 1802 in London, where his father William had been assigned as a minister to the English government. Edward was the seventh of ten children. The Pinkneys returned to William’s home state of Maryland for two years in 1804, only to return to England in 1806. They would remain there until Pinkney was eighteen. He was relatively well-educated in Baltimore schools, but he dropped out at fourteen to enlist in the navy (possibly in the tradition of his mother’s brother John Rogers, Commodore of the United States Navy). While serving in the navy, he spent some three years in the Mediterranean on the USS Washington and other ships of the line.
Pinkney would serve until 1822, when he would resign over a dispute with superior officers. He was temporarily restored to active service but he began to study law. During this interlude, he published a poem set to music in 1823 that won some small acclaim, Look out upon the Stars, My Love: A Serenade Written by a Gentleman of Baltimore. He followed this with a small book containing a single work, Rodolph: A Fragment, published in 1824, which was well received. This year would prove to be a watershed year for Pinkney as he was also admitted to the Maryland bar, and married Georgiana McCausland.
In 1825, he followed his earlier poetic success by publishing a collection titled Poems; among other works, the book contained a revised version of Rodolph. Many of the critics and poets of the day (including Edgar Allan Poe) considered Pinkney to be a new and important lyric poet; Rodolph is even thought to have influenced Poe’s own work “Al Aaraaf.” On the strength of his publications, Pinkney gained a professorship of rhetoric and literature at the University of Maryland.
Pinkney then made a trip to Mexico thinking he could possibly secure a captaincy from the Mexican Navy; disappointed in this endeavor, his health failed. Upon returning home, he was offered the editorship of The Marylander, a political newspaper supporting the policies of John Quincy Adams. He only served on the paper for a few months before his health forced him to give up the post. He died at twenty-five years of age, succeeded by one son. Despite his brief career and relatively few publications, he left a lasting legacy on the lyric poets of the nineteenth century.