Stephen Vincent Benét was born in Pennsylvania on July 22, 1898, to a family with two other children, both of whom also went on to become writers. He lived on several US Army posts throughout his childhood. He published his first poetry collection, Five Men and Pompey, when he was 17 years old. Benét studied at Yale University, but he paused his education to serve during World War I. After the war, Benét finished his education at Yale, earning a master’s degree in English. He became nationally known as a poet, and in his era, his works had a broader readership than those of Wallace Stevens or Robert Frost. He also studied at the Sorbonne in France, where he met and married Rosemary Carr. Among Benét’s best-known works are the short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster” and the narrative poem John Brown’s Body. Benét published over 17 collections of prose and verse. He died in New York City at age 44 in March 1943.

Benét’s works frequently address history and war, perhaps influenced by his upbringing in a military family. He wrote “By the Waters of Babylon” after learning that fascist groups from Nazi Germany bombed the Spanish town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.