Charles Timothy Brooks was a noted American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 translator

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

 of German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 works, a poet, Transcendentalist

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...

 and a Unitarian

Unitarianism

Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....

 pastor.

Biography

Born in Salem

Salem, Massachusetts

Salem is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 40,407 at the 2000 census. It and Lawrence are the county seats of Essex County...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, he graduated at Harvard in 1832, then studied theology and in 1835 began to preach in Nahant, Massachusetts

Nahant, Massachusetts

Nahant is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,632 at the 2000 census. With just of land area, it is the smallest municipality by area in the state...

. He served as a preacher in various New England towns until he became 4 June 1837, pastor of the Unitarian church in Newport, Rhode Island

Newport, Rhode Island

Newport is a city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States, about south of Providence. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War...

 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

The Dial

The Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. In the 1880s it was revived as a political magazine...

, a transcendentalist publication, and wrote a biography of William Ellery Channing

William Ellery Channing

Dr. William Ellery Channing was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and, along with Andrews Norton, one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. He was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker...

, 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
  Faust
  Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
  
   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.

External links

• http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=AAM7245.0001.001 Aquidneck (64 pages) by Charles Timothy Brooks, (scroll down the page for links to individual pages of the book)