Born in London in 1802 when his father was serving as ambassador to the Court of St. James, Pinkney returned with his family to the United States when he was eight.

[2] Pinkney lived with his family in London until he was eight; after they returned to the United States, he attended St. Mary's College of Maryland.

He served until 1824, during which time he traveled to Italy, North Africa, the West Indies, and both coasts of South America.

[4] In 1824, two years after the death of his father, he left the Navy, married, read the law and was admitted to the bar in Maryland.

[8] After serving without a salary as the Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Maryland, Pinkney traveled to Mexico with the intention of joining the navy there.

There, he became editor of a new semi-weekly newspaper, the Marylander, a publication founded to support the re-election of President John Quincy Adams.

The latter relied on Pinkney's poem, "A Health", to publicly woo Sarah Helen Whitman at a lecture in December 1848.

[14] Poe mentions "A Health" in his essay "The Poetic Principle" to exemplify his own aesthetic theory and the association between whiteness, purity, and love.

[17] The North American Review in January 1842, though questioning the moral tone of "Rudolph", concluded, "The author evidently has much of the genuine spirit of poetry; his thoughts are occasionally bold and striking; some passages are wrought with much felicity of expression and clothed with a rich and glowing imagery... and [despite] a few minor imperfections, a highly poetical vein runs through the whole performance".