Arthur Crew Inman papers (Ms.Inman)

Biographical/Historical Note

Arthur Crew Inman was born to Henry Arthur and Roberta Sutherland (Crew) Inman in Atlanta, Georgia. He is best known today as the author of The Inman Diary: A Public and Private Confession, though he was primarily known in his own time as a poet, publishing twelve volumes of poems that failed to attract critical attention. A member of a prominent Southern family, he also edited the letters of Confederate General George Edward Pickett for publication.

Of himself, Inman wrote, "As for my own life, here are the main facts. I was born in Atlanta on May 11, 1895, I went to school to Miss Emma Tuller in Atlanta first, then to the Donald Fraser school in Decatur. After that, I went to boarding school outside of Philadelphia, and to Haverford College at Haverford, Pennsylvania. During my junior year at college I was taken ill, and was obliged to leave college for good. That was in 1916, and I have been forced to be rather saving of my physical strength since then. Until recently, most of the summers were spent at Southwest Harbor, Maine. And since 1917, I have made Boston my headquarters, with occasional trips to New York. In 1923, I was married to Evelyn Yates of Washington, D. C., a Wellesley graduate. Mrs. Inman travels to a considerable extent, but I have not done so for the last ten or twelve years, on the theory that the game is not worth the candle."

As these lines reveal, Inman was something of a troubled soul. He had many deep eccentricities, and after 1916 lived largely as a recluse in Boston. He died by his own hand on December 5, 1963.

Source: Gale Biography Resource Center.