Jones Very

Poet, born in Salem, Massachusetts, USA. He studied at Harvard Divinity School (1836–8), but resigned and spent a month in an asylum. After working briefly as a minister, he retired to Salem and became a Transcendentalist poet, publishing Essays and Poems (1839).

Jones Very (1813 - 1880) was an essayist and poet, born at Salem, Mass., where he became a clergyman and something of a mystic. He published one small volume, Essays and Poems, whose poems were chiefly Shakespearian sonnets.

Bronson Alcott wrote of him in December 1838:

I received a letter on Monday of this week from Jones Very of Salem, formerly Tutor in Greek at Harvard College — which institution he left, a few weeks since, being deemed insane by the Faculty. (107-108)

Upon hearing of Very's death, Alcott wrote a brief remembrance on May 16, 1880:

The newspapers record the death of Jones Very of Salem, Mass. It was my fortune to have known the man while he was tutor in Harvard College and writing his Sonnets and Essays on Shakespeare, which were edited by Emerson, and published in 1839. When his papers were submitted to Emerson for criticism the spelling was found faulty and on Emerson's pointing out the defect, he was told that this was by dictation of the Spirit also. Whether Emerson's witty reply, "that the Spirit should be a better speller," qualified the mystic's vision does not appear otherwise than that the printed volume shows no traces of illiteracy in the text. While walking by his side, I remember, he seemed spectral, — and somehow using my feet instead of his own, keeping as near me as he could, and jostling me frequently. He ventured, withal, to warn me of falling into idolatries, while he brought a sonnet or two (since printed) for my benefit. His temperament was delicate and nervous, disposed to visionariness and a dreamy idealism, stimulated by over-studies and the school of thought then in the ascendant. His sonnets and Shakespearean essays surpass any that have since appeared in subtlety and simplicity of execution.