Fitz-Greene Halleck was born on July 8, 1790,[1] in Guilford, Connecticut, in a house at the corner of Whitfield and Water Streets.

At the age of two, the young Halleck experienced hearing loss when two soldiers fired off their guns next to his left ear; he was partially deaf for the remainder of his life.

After a month of searching, he had all but given up and made plans to move to Richmond, Virginia, but he was hired by a banker named Jacob Barker.

[8] Both Halleck and Drake became associated with the New York writers known as the Knickerbocker Group, led by William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving, pioneers in their fields.

Halleck commemorated his friend in "The Death of Joseph Rodman Drake" (1820), which begins, "Green be the turf above thee".

His long poem Marco Bozzaris (1825) was dedicated to the heroic Greek freedom fighter against the Turks, showing the continuing influence of Byron's example.

[12] He often turned down requests for public appearances in his later years, and he complained about being pestered by "frequent appeals for letters to hard-hearted editors".

He wrote, "I am favored by affectionate fathers with epistles announcing that their eldest-born has been named after me, a calamity that costs me a letter of profound gratefulness".

He found that Halleck was enamored at the age of 19 with a young Cuban named Carlos Menie, to whom he dedicated a few of his early poems.

He is perhaps the handsomest man in New York, — a face like an angel, a form like an Apollo; and, as I well knew that his person was the true index of his mind, I felt myself during the ceremony as committing a crime in aiding and assisting such a sacrifice.

"[17] Hallock described the poet Halleck's last major work, "Young America", as both "a jaded critique of marriage and a pederastic boy-worship reminiscent of classical homosexuality.

[18] In 1903, plans were set to move the bodies of Drake, his wife, daughter, sister, and nephew to Halleck's plot in Guilford.

[19] In the mid to late 19th century, Halleck was regarded as one of America's leading poets and had a wide general readership; he was dubbed "the American Byron".

Among his most well-known poems was "Marco Bozzaris", which Halleck noted was "puffed in a thousand (more or less) magazines and newspapers" in the United States, England, Scotland, and Ireland.

The American writer and critic Edgar Allan Poe reviewed Halleck's poetry collection Alnwick Castle.

"[21] In the September 1843 issue of Graham's Magazine, Poe wrote that Halleck "has nearly abandoned the Muses, much to the regret of his friends and to the neglect of his reputation.

After his death, poet William Cullen Bryant addressed the New York Historical Society on February 2, 1869, and spoke about this blank period in Halleck's career.