Thomas William Parsons

Photograph of Parsons from unknown date

Thomas William Parsons (August 18, 1819, Boston – September 3, 1892, Scituate, Massachusetts[1]) was an American dentist and poet.

Parsons was educated at the Boston Latin School, and visited Italy to study Italian literature in 1836-7.[2] His translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, which eventually comprised all the Inferno, two-thirds of the Purgatorio and fragments of the Paradiso,[3] began to appear in 1843.[2] After practicing dentistry in Boston, he lived for several years in England before returning to Boston in 1872.[4] He was a contributor to The Galaxy and The Atlantic Monthly.[2] In 1857 he married Anna (or Hannah) M. Allen (1821-1881).

Works

  • The First Ten Cantos of the Inferno of Dante, 1843
  • Poems, 1854
  • (ed. C. E. Norton), The Divine Comedy of Dante Aligheri, 1893

References

  1. ^ Underwood, F. H., Builders of American literature, 1893
  2. ^ a b c Drake, F. S., Dictionary of American biography, 1870
  3. ^ Hart, J. D., Oxford companion to American literature, 1941
  4. ^ Appleton's cyclopaedia of American biography, 6 vols, 1888
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