“Americas Greatest Sonneteer” Lloyd Mifflin Hand Written 3 Page Letter Dated 1911. This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity. He was born and lived much of his life in Columbia, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania where he was free to wander the banks of the Susquehanna River and its tributaries. Huston Mifflin, of English Quaker descent, was Lloyds first teacher in drawing and sketching. His mother, Elizabeth A. Heise, came from German heritage. She was born in Columbia and died when Lloyd was very young. His father, a kind and patient man, noted that Lloyd was a rather weak child and provided equestrian and water sports to improve his health. Lloyd was taught in the public schools in Columbia, including the Washington Classical Institute. The Mifflin family supported local education by bequeathing two houses from their estate, the cottage known as Norwood and the grand house, Cloverton, as well as the estate itself. The school district annually planted a flower on his birthday, September 15, and read one of his sonnets, A Picture of My Mother. At the age of 14, Lloyd undertook drawing and sketching with his father. He also had Thomas Moran as an instructor in painting and worked with Isaac Williams of Philadelphia for a short time. In 1869, he traveled to Europe where he studied with Henry Herzog at Dusseldorf, Germany. His adventures also took him to Italy, France, England, and Scotland. In his paintings, he captured the natural with refined color and light, which yielded firm and balanced forms. He preferred to capture the peacefulness of a woodland path or other quiet spots, rather than the noise of an industrial area. Later in his life he liked seasonal paintings, since they gave him a chance to probe deeper into a philosophical spirit. Mifflin turned to poetry at the age of 51. According to what he wrote in The Hills, his first volume of poetry (1896), he claimed that the fumes of the paint made him sick. In his lifetime he filled twelve books of verse with two hundred poems and more than six hundred sonnets. He wrote more sonnets than William Shakespeare, John Milton, and William Wordsworth. John Keats, however, was his favorite. He preferred Keats for his expression regarding the love of beauty, both real and ideal; his forms were always poised and dignified. During this time he also taught himself the art of etching, using this technique to illustrate The Hills. Mifflin stressed a strong love of beauty in his poetry as he did in his painting. His imagination and beautiful sense of harmony characterize his verse. The main source of his ambition, inspiration and consolation are clearly seen in The Invocation. He devoted his greatest efforts to the category of the sonnet, considering it the most distinguished and exalted of all forms of English poetry. He enjoyed the structure, the metrical and rhythmic beauty, the plan of metrical rhyme and diction. Mifflin found it much like a musical composition. Sonnets bipartite in structure, usually have a combination of eight lines, followed by six. The rhyme schemes and diction, include many metaphors and an extensive vocabulary. His one hundred and fifty nature sonnets emphasize the descriptive, not the intuitional. To sample his poetic styles, one should turn to his three hundred and fifty collected sonnets, published in 1905 with a second edition in 1907. A large number came from earlier books. As a poet, Mifflin was an idealist and respected the ideal of Greek mythological beauty. In the Echoes of the Greek Idylls and Slopes of Helicon, we find no roughness of spirit. There was a conscience of a spiritual presence. His religious sonnets were grounded in the faith of a personal God which related more to his aesthetic feelings than to traditional Christianity. Themes of life and death occur in many sonnets. His poetry inspired faith, hope and deep emotion. These sonnets were more descriptive than philosophical. Mifflin’s personal ambition was to excel; he wanted to write the perfect sonnet. Like the classical Greeks, he hoped his poetry would obtain an immortality. Mifflin thought the world had largely ignored him, even though his poetry received high praise. At his lifes end he changed his opinion and credited his readers with more accolades than he had earlier thought. Perhaps he was too hard on himself. Lloyd Mifflin carried the name Hermit of the hills who walked the world as one entranced and in lifes turbid wave, dropped the crown-jewel of his melody. The item “Americas Greatest Sonneteer Lloyd Mifflin Hand Written Letter Mueller COA” is in sale since Saturday, August 15, 2020. This item is in the category “Collectibles\Autographs\Historical”. The seller is “historicsellsmemorabilia” and is located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This item can be shipped to United States.