Sidney Lanier
American musician and poet (1842-1881) · United States · On the map · Musicians · Died at 39
Sidney Clopton Lanier was an American musician, poet and author. He served in the Confederate States Army as a private, worked on a blockade-running ship for which he was imprisoned, taught, worked at a hotel where he gave musical performances, was a church organist, and worked as a lawyer.
Sidney Lanier is read about 77 times a day, in 20 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 3 November 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 147 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?People around Sidney
Sidney LanierPartners
Is this everyone?
Only relatives with a profile here are drawn, so a family can be larger than this. A line here can also be wrong. A marriage is drawn as ended only where its end is recorded, so a spouse drawn here may be a former one.
Correct this familyMedia & music
About this person
As a poet he sometimes used dialects. Many of his poems are written in heightened, but often archaic, American English. He became a flautist and sold poems to publications. He eventually became a professor of literature at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and is known for his adaptation of musical meter to poetry. Many schools, other structures and two lakes are named for him, and he became hailed in the South as the "poet of the Confederacy". A 1972 US postage stamp honored him as an "American poet".
