His first book was published when he was aged 17, and he was awarded an M.A. in English upon submission of his third volume of poetry in lieu of a thesis.[5] He was also a part-time contributor to Time magazine in the magazine's early years.[6]
In 1920 and 1921, Benét was in France on a Yale traveling fellowship, where he met Rosemary Carr; the couple married in Chicago in November 1921.[7] Carr was also a writer and poet, and they collaborated on some works.
In 1926, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship award and, while living in Paris, wrote John Brown's Body.[8]
Out of John Brown's strong sinews the tall skyscrapers grow,
Out of his heart the chanting buildings rise,
Rivet and girder, motor and dynamo,
Pillar of smoke by day and fire by night,
The steel-faced cities reaching at the skies,
The whole enormous and rotating cage
Hung with hard jewels of electric light,
Smoky with sorrow, black with splendor, dyed
Whiter than damask for a crystal bride
With metal suns, the engine-handed Age,
The genie we have raised to rule the earth,
Obsequious to our will
But servant-master still,
The tireless serf already half a god --
On three separate occasions, Benét was awarded the O. Henry Award: in 1932, for his short stories An End to Dreams in 1932, in 1937, for The Devil and Daniel Webster, and in 1940, for Freedom's a Hard-Bought Thing.
His fantasy short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster" inspired several unauthorized dramatizations by other writers after its publication, which prompted Benét to adapt his own work for the stage.[13] Benét approached composer Douglas Moore to create an opera of the work with Benét serving as librettist in 1937.[13]
The Devil and Daniel Webster: An Opera in One Act, published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1939, premiered on Broadway that same year.[13] The opera version of Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster" was created from 1937 through 1939, and its libretto served as the basis for a 1938 play adaptation of the work, The Devil and Daniel Webster: A Play in One Act, published by Dramatists Play Service in 1938.[13] The play, in turn, was used as the source for a screenplay adaptation co-written by Benét, which was released in 1941 as All That Money Can Buy.[13]
Benét also wrote a sequel, "Daniel Webster and the Sea Serpent", in which Daniel Webster encounters Leviathan.
They came here, they toiled here, they suffered many pains, they lived here, they died here, they left singing names.
— Used by the Menorcan Cultural Society to honor their Menorcan ancestors who fled Andrew Turnbull's failed New Smyrna, Florida colony, and found sanctuary in St. Augustine, Florida, though Benét actually wrote those lines in a poem about the French pioneers in the colonial-era United States
On April 17, 1943, NBC Radio broadcast a special tribute to his life and works, which included a performance by Helen Hayes.[15][16] He was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for Western Star, an unfinished narrative poem on the settling of the United States.
Dee Brown'sBury My Heart at Wounded Knee takes its title from the final phrase of Benét's poem "American Names". The full quotation appears at the beginning of Brown's book:
I shall not be there
I shall rise and pass
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.
^"Stephen Vincent Benét". www.hmdb.org. Retrieved 27 August 2021. While some references state that Benet was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, he was actually born in the adjacent borough of Fountain Hill.
^"Stephen Vincent Benét"(PDF). Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University Deceased during the Year 1942–1943. New Haven: Yale University. January 1, 1944. p. 123.
^Bronson, Francis W., Thomas Caldecott Chubb, and Cyril Hume, eds. (1922) The Yale Record Book of Verse: 1872–1922. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 16–17, 24, 42–43, 50–51, 67–68, 82–83.
^The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. 12, Micropaedia, 15th edition, Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. c. 1989
^Weicksel, Amanda (2001). "Stephen Vincent Benét". Literary and Cultural Heritage Map of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Center for the Book, Penn State University. Archived from the original on June 11, 2010. Retrieved May 24, 2010.
^"Radio". The Official Web Site of Helen Hayes. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016.
Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. pp. 46–47.
Fenton, Charles A. (1978) [1958]. Stephen Vincent Benét: The Life and Times of an American Man of Letters, 1898–1943. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN0-313-20200-1.
