Fitz-Greene Halleck - Legacy

Legacy

• 1869, the collected Poetical Writings and a traditional Life and Letters, both edited and written by James Grant Wilson, were published.
• 1869, a granite monument was erected to Halleck in Guilford, the first to memorialize an American poet. The writer Bayard Taylor, author of America's first homosexual novel Joseph and His Friend (1870), which is believed to be a fictional account of the relationship between Halleck and Drake, spoke at the commemoration.
• In 1877 a statue was erected to him in New York's Central Park; he is the only American writer on the Literary Walk. It was dedicated by President Rutherford B. Hayes, with 10,000 people attending. After that, requirements for statues became more stringent.
• In 2006 the Fitz-Greene Halleck Society was founded to raise awareness of this nearly forgotten historical figure.