Charles Timothy Brooks

Biography

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, he graduated at Harvard in 1832, then studied theology and in 1835 began to preach in Nahant, Massachusetts. He served as a preacher in various New England towns until he became pastor of the Unitarian church in Newport, Rhode Island on June 4, 1837, where he remained until his death in 1883.

In addition to his translations, he published theological writings, contributed to The Dial, a transcendentalist publication, and wrote a biography of William Ellery Channing, another Unitarian minister in Newport, Rhode Island (William Ellery Channing: A Centennial Memory, 1880).

Works

German translations into English

Schiller's "William Tell (Providence, 1838)

Songs and Ballads from the German, forming one volume of George

Ripley's Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature (Boston, 1842)

Schiller's Homage of the Arts (Boston, 1847; 2d ed., New York, 1870);

German Lyrics (Boston, 1853);

Goethe's Faust in the original metres (1856)

Life, Opinions, Actions, and Fate of Hieronymus Jobs, the Candidate, a satirical poem, popular in Germany (Philadelphia, 1863)

Richter's Titan and Hesperus (1865)

Schefer's "Layman's Breviary" (1867) and "World-Priest" (1873)

Ruckert's "Wisdom of the Brahmin (Boston, 1882)

several children's books

Poetry

Aquidneck, a poem delivered at the 100th anniversary of the Redwood library (Newport, 1848)

Songs of Field and Flood, a volume of poems (Boston, 1854)

numerous occasional verses

A collection of his poems, original and translated, with a memoir by Charles W. Wendte, was published in Boston after his death.

Other works

"The Controversy touching the Old Stone Mill," opposing the theory that it was built by the Northmen (Newport, 1851);

William Ellery Channing, A Centennial Memory (Boston, 1880)

a volume of sermons

According to Appleton's Encyclopedia, several of Brooks' works were unpublished years after his death:

Among his unpublished translations are Schiller's "Mary Stuart" and "Joan of Arc" (1840): the "Autobiography of Klaus Harms"; Richter's "Selina"; Grillparzer's "Ahn-frau"; Immermann's "Der letzte Tulifant," and Hams Sachs's play, "The Unlike Children of Eve," first acted in 1553. In 1853, after a voyage to India for his health, Mr. Brooks wrote a narrative titled " Eight Months on the Ocean and Eight Weeks in India," which is also still in manuscript.