Henry Bellamann(1882-1945)

A native of Fulton, Missouri, Heinrich Hauer Bellamann was born on April 28, 1882. He was a serious student of music and studied both in this country and abroad. From 1907 until 1932, when he began to pursue writing full-time, Bellamann held administrative and teaching positions at several educational institutions including Julliard and Vassar. During these years, Bellamann wrote poetry and published three volumes: A Music Teacher's Notebook (1920), Cups of Illusion (1923), and The Upward Pass (1928). Although his poetry is today even less well known than his fiction, Bellamann is recognized by David Perkins in his 1976 History of Modern Poetry in which he ranks Bellamann with the serious minor poets who "adopted the mode" of the Imagists (p. 347). In 1942 Publishers' Weekly inaccurately reported that Bellamann was an author "new to the book trade" prior to the publication of Kings Row in 1940 (143:244). However, in addition to the three volumes of poetry already mentioned, four of Bellamann's novels were published before Kings Row. Furthermore, the range of sub-genre in which Bellamann experimented is quite surprising. In addition to Kings Row, Bellamann wrote two farm novels, a novel of manners, a social drama, a mystery, and a gothic romance. From 1907 until his death in 1945, Bellamann was married to Katherine Jones Bellamann of Carthage, Mississippi. Mrs. Bellamann herself was a novelist and poet and shared much creative work with her husband. In 1948, she completed Parris Mitchell of Kings Row, his posthumous sequel to Kings Row. She died in 1956. The Bellamanns had no children.