The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Benét, Stephen Vincent
(bn´) (KEY) , 18981943, American poet and author, b. Bethlehem, Pa., grad. Yale, 1919; brother of William Rose Benét. After graduating from college, Benét published several volumes of verse, including A Ballad of William Sycamore (1923), and several novels, of which Jean Huguenot (1923) and The Spanish Bayonet (1926) are the best. He is most famous for John Browns Body (1928), a long narrative poem of the Civil War (Pulitzer Prize, 1929), and his short story, The Devil and Daniel Webster. Western Star, a long narrative poem about the westward migration left unfinished at his death, was published in 1943 (Pulitzer Prize, 1944).