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Whittier grew up on the Massachusetts farm of his Quaker
family. His first poem, published in a local paper when he
was fourteen, attracted the attention of abolitionist William
Lloyd Garrison, who urged the boy to pursue his education.
Though the family had long suffered in poverty, Whittier managed
to put himself through two years of school at the Haverhill
Academy. In his twenties Whittier began editing regional newspapers.
He served one term in the Massachusetts legislature (1835)
and was one of the founding leaders of the antislavery Liberty
Party in 1839. Throughout the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, he
continued his newspaper work, editing several abolitionist
papers in a time before the antislavery movement was generally
favored in the North. At the same time, he wrote prose and
poetry about his own rural region, collected in such volumes
as Legends of New England (1831) and Lays of
My Home (1843). Whittier's reputation received a boost
in 1857, when the new Atlantic Monthly started to
publish his poems and humorous tales. His long poem Snow-Bound (1866) ensured Whittier's fame and financial well-being for
the remaining years of his life.
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