[1] His father, a sea-captain, was wrecked and lost on one of his voyages while Richard was a child, and the lad went in 1835 to New York City with his mother, who had married again.

His talents brought him into contact with young men interested in literature, notably with Bayard Taylor, who had just published his Views Afoot.

[3] In his parody of contemporary writers, The Echo Club (1876), Bayard Taylor placed Stoddard as one of the most important critics of the day, alongside James Russell Lowell and George Ripley.

[4] More important than his critical was his poetical work, which at its best is sincere, original and marked by delicate fancy, and felicity of form; and his songs have given him a high and permanent place among American lyric poets.

Stoddard’s 1856 poem "Roses and Thorns", in a Russian translation by Aleksey Pleshcheyev, was set for voice and piano by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as "Legend", No.