William Stanley Braithwaite

William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite was an African-American writer, poet, literary critic, anthologist, and publisher. His work as a critic and anthologist was widely praised and important in the development of East Coast poetry styles in the early 20th century.

Braithwaite was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1878. According to Jill Lepore, his father "came from a wealthy British Guiana family; his mother was the daughter of a North Carolina slave." His father preferred that the children be educated at home, and until his untimely death, they were raised in a genteel household of means. Braithwaite married Emma Kelly in 1903; they had seven children. He died at his home at 409 Edgecombe Avenue home in Harlem after a brief illness on June 8, 1962.

At the age of 12, upon the death of his father, Braithwaite was forced to quit school to support his family. When he was aged 15 he was apprenticed to a typesetter for the Boston publisher, Ginn & Co., where he discovered an affinity for lyric poetry and began to write his own poems. After early publications in periodicals, he published his first collection of 63 poems, Lyrics of Life and Love, at the age of 26 in 1904. From 1901 to 1902, Braithwaite served as an editor of the Boston-published Colored American Magazine. By 1906 he had been accepted as a member of the prestigious Boston Authors Club.

From 1905 to 1931 he wrote for The Boston Evening Transcript, contributing columns about contemporary poets and an annual survey of the field. He also wrote articles, reviews and poetry for many other periodicals and journals, including the Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, New York Times, The New Republic, The Crisis, Opportunity, and Colored American Magazine. He also began publishing anthologies on poetry of various periods, such as the Georgian and Elizabethan eras.