Griswold, Rufus Wilmot (1815-1857)

US anthologist, editor, and literary critic. He was a strong opponent of Americanism in literature and published an anthology of The Poets and Poetry of America (1842). He succeeded Edgar Allan Poe as editor of Graham's Magazine (1842-43). Among the other literary collections he edited are The Prose Works of John Milton (1845, 1847), The Prose Writers of America (1847), and The Female Poets of America (1848).

Griswold was born in Benson, Vermont. After an obscure period of journalism and editorial work beginning in 1830, he obtained a license as a Baptist minister, though he seems never to have taken a regular pulpit. He edited various periodicals and campaigned against capital punishment and imprisonment for debt. With William Leggett, among others, he established a library in the New York City Prison. He wrote a rather harsh obituary of Poe (1849), even though Poe had named him as his literary executor. He published a flawed edition of Poe's works (1850-56) and included a scandalous memoir. He edited the International Monthly Magazine (1850-52) and P T Barnum's Illustrated News (1852-53). He wrote a lengthy and remarkably destructive review of the Duykinck's Cyclopedia of American Literature in the New York Herald (February 1856).