39 Facts About Jones Very

Jones Very was an American poet, essayist, clergyman, and mystic associated with the American Transcendentalism movement.

Jones Very was known as a scholar of William Shakespeare, and many of his poems were Shakespearean sonnets.

Jones Very studied epic poetry and was invited to lecture on the topic in his home town, which drew the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Jones Very lived the majority of his life as a recluse from then, issuing poetry only sparingly.

Jones Very was born on August 28,1813, in Salem, Massachusetts, and spent much of his childhood at sea.

Jones Very was the eldest of six children, born out of wedlock to two first cousins; his sister Lydia became a writer.

Jones Very believed that marriage was only a moral arrangement and not a legal one.

Jones Very's father, named Jones Very, was a captain during the War of 1812 and was held in Nova Scotia for a time by the British as a prisoner of war.

Jones Very's father died on the return trip, apparently due to a lung disease he contracted while in Nova Scotia.

Jones Very composed a poem for the dedication of a new Unitarian church in Salem: "O God; On this, our temple, rest thy smile, Till bent with days its tower shall nod".

Jones Very had become interested in the works of Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller.

Jones Very graduated from Harvard in 1836, ranked number two in his class.

Jones Very was chosen to speak at his commencement; his address was titled "Individuality".

Jones Very became known for his ability to draw people into literature, and he was asked to speak at a lyceum in his hometown of Salem in 1837.

Unlike Hawthorne, Emerson found him "remarkable", and when Jones Very showed up at his home unannounced along with Cornelius Conway Felton in 1838, Emerson invited several other friends, including Henry David Thoreau, to meet him.

At the meeting, held at the home of Caleb Stetson in Medford, Massachusetts, Jones Very was engaged in the discussion, building his reputation as a mystic within that circle.

The first signs of a breakdown came shortly after meeting Emerson as Jones Very was completing an essay on William Shakespeare.

Jones Very said he was under the influence of the Holy Spirit and composed verse while in this state.

Jones Very then cried out to his students "Flee to the mountains, for the end of all things is at hand".

Jones Very looked much flushed and his eyes very brilliant and unwinking.

Jones Very performed similar "baptisms" to other people throughout Salem, including ministers.

Jones Very was institutionalized for a month at a hospital near Boston, the McLean Asylum, as he wrote "contrary to my will".

Jones Very was replaced at Harvard by Charles Stearns Wheeler.

Jones Very was released on October 17,1838, but he refused to renounce his beliefs.

Emerson saw a kindred spirit in Jones Very and defended his sanity.

Jones Very wrote to Margaret Fuller: "Such a mind cannot be lost".

Jones Very helped Very publish Essays and Poems in 1839.

Jones Very published several poems in the Western Messenger between 1838 and 1840 as well as in The Dial, the journal of the Transcendentalists.

Jones Very was disappointed that Emerson, serving as editor of the journal, altered his poems.

Jones Very believed his role as a prophet would last only 12 months.

The last decades of Jones Very's life were spent in Salem as a recluse under the care of his sister.

Jones Very was then the dreamy mystic of our circle of Transcendentalists, and a subject of speculation by us.

Jones Very professed to be taught by the Spirit and to write under its inspiration.

Jones Very's voice had a certain hollowness, as if echoing mine.

Jones Very's whole bearing made an impression as if himself were detached from his thought and his body were another's.

Jones Very ventured, withal, to warn me of falling into idolatries, while he brought a sonnet or two for my benefit.

Jones Very's temperament was delicate and nervous, disposed to visionariness and a dreamy idealism, stimulated by over-studies and the school of thought then in the ascendant.

The first critical review of Jones Very's book was written by Margaret Fuller and published in Orestes Brownson's Boston Quarterly Review; it said Jones Very's poems had "an elasticity of spirit, a genuine flow of thought, and unsought nobleness and purity", but she admitted she preferred the prose in the collection over the poetry.

Jones Very mocked the "sing song" style of the poems and questioned his religious mission.