Louis How

Louis Howe (1873-1947) was a prolific twentieth-century poet and biographer to his grandfather, James Buchanan Eads, who built the Eads Bridge across the Mississippi River in St. Louis. Like there was one brother, James Eads Howe. Not only their grandfather was a wealthy engineer and contractor, but their father, James Flintham Howe, was vice president and general manager of the Wabash Railway. Thus, they were the heirs of one of the richest families of St. Louis. While his brother decided to live like a tramp and spent his efforts trying to help the homeless, Louis Howe "became an artist and became interested in the life of a bohemian gay." While How certainly wrote from a position of knowledge and authority when he created his grandfather's biography, the biography was criticized in the MIT review. Before his poems were first published, Howe wrote an anthology of American poetry, but never published it. His manuscript was responsible for reviving interest in the early American poet Frederick Goddard Tuckerman.