Evert Augustus Duyckinck

Evert Augustus Duyckinck (pronounced DIE-KINK) (November 23, 1816 – August 13, 1878) was an American publisher and biographer. He was associated with the literary side of the Young America movement in New York.

Biography He was born on November 23, 1816, in New York City to Evert Duyckinck, a publisher.

Evert the younger graduated from Columbia College, where he was a member of the Philolexian Society, in 1835. He then studied law with John Anthon, and was admitted to the bar in 1837. In 1840 he started a monthly magazine with Cornelius Mathews called Arcturus, which ran until 1842. The New York Tribune commented on the important partnership by referring to Duyckinck and Mathews as "the Castor and Pollux of Literature—the Gemini of the literary Zodiac". Duyckinck wrote articles on other authors while at home and in Europe. Between 1844 and 1846, Evert became the literary editor of John L. O'Sullivan's The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, which moved from Washington, D.C., to New York in 1840.

On April 22, 1840, in Connecticut he married Margaret Wolfe Panton, and they had three children: Evert Augustus Duyckinck II, George Duyckinck, and Henry Duyckinck (1843-1870). All died young. In 1845, he assisted Edgar Allan Poe in printing his Tales collection and selected which stories to include. The collection was a critical success, though Poe was somewhat disappointed by Duyckinck's choices. In 1847 he became the editor of The Literary World, a weekly review of books written with his brother George Long Duyckinck until 1853. The two brothers became the unofficial leaders of the New York literary scene in the 1840s into the 1850s.

Letter to Lincoln On 18 February 1865, Duyckinck sent President Abraham Lincoln a letter, which he signed "Asmodeus", with his initials below his pseudonym. The letter enclosed a newspaper clipping about an inappropriate joke allegedly told by Lincoln at the Hampton Roads Peace Conference. The purpose of Duyckinck's letter was to advise Lincoln of "an important omission" about the history of the conference. He advised that the newspaper clipping be added to the "Archives of the Nation".

Legacy and criticism

In January 1879, a meeting in his memory was held by the New York Historical Society, and a biographical sketch of Duyckinck was read by William Allen Butler.

Herman Melville, a close friend of Duyckinck's with whom he corresponded often, refers in his novel Mardi (1849) to Duyckinck's highbrow magazine Arcturus by naming a ship in the book Arcturion. Mardi'''s narrator "complained about the low literary level of its crew: 'Ay, ay, Arcturion! thou wast exceedingly dull'". Charles Frederick Briggs noted Duyckinck's ability in the "art of puffing", heavy praise for works that did not necessarily merit it. Edwin Percy Whipple chidingly called Duyckinck "the most Bostonian of New-Yorkers".

New York Historical Society biographies Francis L. Hawks, D.D., LL, D. (1867; printed, 1871) Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1872) James William Beekman (1877) John Wolfe (1872) and Samuel G. Drake (1876)