Bibliographical Note
The main sources of primary material for Alan Seeger continue to be his Poems (New York: Scribner’s, 1916) and Letters and Diary (New York: Scribner’s, 1917). The “Last Poems” section of his Poems constitutes roughly a quarter of Seeger’s published output. Seeger also published in the Harvard Monthly some work not included in Poems. For unpublished material and manuscripts of published material, consult the collections at the Library of Congress and, especially, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
For Seeger’s biography, John A. Hart provides a good, brief overview in his entry in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (American Poets, 1880-1945: First Series. Ed. Peter Quartermain. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 45. Detroit: Gale, 1986. 371-75.) Irving Werstein’s longer account in Sound No Trumpet (New York: Crowell, 1967) is fuller, but falls short of being the kind of scholarly biography that the subject warrants. Ann M. Pescatello’s biography (Charles Seeger: A Life in American Music. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1992) of Seeger’s older brother Charles—a noted musicologist and the father of folk singer Pete Seeger—provides important insight into the family environment in which Alan Seeger grew up.
Seeger was much written-about following his death. These accounts are often valuable for insights into his personality, intellectual, and artistic attitudes, while they also provide glimpses of the nature of the literary world of the day. Among the best of these essays are those by Harrison Reeves [“The Tragedy of Alan Seeger.” The New Republic 10 (1917): 160-62], Adolphe Roberts [“The Alan Seeger I Knew.” The Bookman: A Review of Books and Life 47.6 (1918): 585-90], and John Hall Wheelock [writing as “O,” “Alan Seeger: America’s Soldier Poet.” Poetry Review. In The Living Age 294 (1917): 221-25].
Interest in Seeger declined rapidly after the end of the war, but has revived recently. Historian David Kennedy’s brief comments in Over Here: The First World War and American Society (Twenty fifth Anniversary Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) remain useful. Alicia Miller’s “An American Soldier-Poet: Alan Seeger and War Culture in the United States, 1914-1918.” [The Journal of First World War Studies 1.1 (2010): 15-33] successfully examines the use made of Alan Seeger in promoting American intervention into the war. Tim Dayton’s "Alan Seeger: Medievalism as an Alternative Ideology" [The Journal of First World War Studies 3.2 (2012): 125–144] examines the role of medievalism in shaping Seeger’s vision of the war and its relation to modern society. This essay has been incorporated into the chapter on Seeger in Dayton's American Poetry and the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2018), the most comprehensive study of Seeger's poetry to date.