Helen Bevington

Helen Smith Bevington (1906-2001) was an American poet, prose author, and educator.

She was born in Afton, New York, between 1906 March 17 and the end of that year, and grew up in Worcester, New York, where her father was a Methodist minister.

She attended the University of Chicago and got a degree in philosophy. She went on to do a thesis on Thoreau and earn a master’s degree from Columbia.

In 1928 she married Merle M. Bevington; they travelled abroad, returning in 1929 in response to the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Both Bevingtons taught English at Duke University starting in the 1940s -- in her case, 1943-1976.

Her husband passed away in 1964.

Aside from her books her work appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and The American Scholar.

Bevington was a poet, a diarist and an essayist. Winner of the Roanoke-Chowan Award (1956), the North Carolina Award for Literature (1973), and the Mayflower Cup (1974).

She died Friday, 2001 March 16 in Chicago.

Books by Helen Bevington

• Dr. Johnson’s Waterfall, and Other Poems. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1946.
• Nineteen Million Elephants, and Other Poems. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1950.
• A Change of Sky, and Other Poems. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1956.
• When Found, Make a Verse of. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961.
• Charley Smith’s Girl: A Memoir. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.
• A Book & A Love Affair. NewYork: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.
• The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971.
• Beautiful Lofty People. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974.
• Along Came the Witch: A Journal in the 1960s. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.
• The Journey Is Everything: A Journal of the Seventies. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1983.
• The World and the Bo Tree. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991.
• The Third and Only Way: Reflections on Staying Alive. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996.