Talk:George Sterling

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Untitled[edit]

Reordered external links. george-sterling.org consists mainly of material collected from other Web pages; page at eldritchdark.com is a personal memoir by Clark Ashton Smith of his relationship with Sterling. --Cxarli 18:48, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

george-sterling.org is by the same author as eldritchdark.com and currently more than half the material on it is not currently any where else on the web and by the end, that will be closer to 90%. Dagon

On re-reading the above I sound rather terse, sorry for that Dagon

"Pomes"?[edit]

Quote: "A poet who called his works 'pomes'".

May we have a citation in support of this remark, please? If one is not forthcoming soon, then I shall delete it. I fail to see its relevance, and it seems vaguely belittling to Sterling.User:Pernoctus (talk) 17:52, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, no support for the "pomes" remark has been forthcoming, so out it goes.Pernoctus (talk) 16:27, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why George Sterling left Sag Harbor.[edit]

A locally well known story about George Sterling explains why it was that he left Sag Harbor. One night someone hung a pirate flag from the top of the steeple of the Whalers Church in Sag Harbor. The steeple (blown down in the hurricane of 1939) was very tall and very steep. No one could figure out how to get the flag down, until someone thought to ask for volunteers to climb the steeple to remove it, knowing that the culprit would likely be the one to volunteer. Only George Sterling volunteered to show his prowess in scaling the steeple, thereby exposing himself as the person who had hung the flag. He left town shortly after in disgrace. Several member of the Sterling family still reside in the Sag Harbor area.

Idebbi (talk) 06:26, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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External links modified[edit]

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“Life and career” section problems[edit]

The “Life and career” section of this page has numerous problems.


Let’s start with the first paragraph, second sentence: it wasn’t one of Dr. Sterling’s sons; he sent all three to the seminary college to become Roman Catholic priests. George was not selected for three years; he was enrolled in a six-year program, but dropped out after three years. The class mentioned was not “English” but “English poetry,” and the teacher never used just his middle initial but always all three names: John Bannister Tabb. Frank C. Havens’ given arrival date in San Francisco is “the late 19th century,” which seems too vague since his biography says Havens arrived February 8, 1866. Havens was never a lawyer. Sterling never worked as a real estate broker; he did work for his uncle for twenty years, starting as a bank clerk, cashier, insurance clerk, real estate agent (but never a broker), and bookkeeper before moving up to more responsible positions as auditor, corporate treasurer, member of corporate boards of directors, and vice president. He worked not just in Oakland but both in San Francisco and Oakland.

In the second paragraph, the term “counterculture” was not coined until the 1960s, so it is not an apt description for Carmel in the early 1900s. Sterling did not live in the Carmel Woods subdivision, because he left in 1914 and Carmel Woods was not opened until 1922. Sterling did not live in Carmel for six years, but from 1905 until 1914, for almost nine years. Robinson Jeffers was not influential in Sterling’s move to Carmel because Jeffers had never been to Carmel until 1914, months after Sterling had moved away. A colony of painters lived in Carmel before Sterling lived there. Sterling did not make Carmel world-famous; its reputation when Sterling died (not well-known enough to be called “famous” then) was established only in the United States, not worldwide. Upton Sinclair and the MacGowan sisters moved to Carmel before “A Wine of Wizardry” was published, not afterwards. What “flames” did Sterling’s wife’s suicide add to? That remark baffles me. And his wife committed suicide in 1918, four years after moving away from Carmel, and died in Piedmont, not in Carmel. Sterling did not play “a starring role” in Fire, but a supporting role.


I could continue past these first two paragraphs, but my point is that this “Life and career” section is riddled with inaccurate information. The errors mentioned above are sins of commission, but the section also makes sins of omission. Sterling played important roles in the growth of the cities of Oakland, Piedmont, and Carmel-by-the-Sea, which are never discussed. Where is his twenty-year career as a business executive? Where is his relationship with his mentor, Ambrose Bierce? Where is his close friendship with Jack London? Most importantly, where is his literary career? And where are the contemporary critical responses to his writings?


To address all those issues, I propose replacing the existing “Life and career” section with two new sections: “Life and business career” and “ Literary career.” The first new section will discuss Sterling’s private life and his growth in and abandonment of a successful career in business. The second section will discuss the creation and publication of Sterling’s volumes of poems, plays, and songs, and will summarize contemporary critical evaluations of his works.


About six years ago I created and have since maintained the “Writings” section of this page. I have contributed research and writing to published Sterling-related projects, and have a fairly complete library of books and journal articles about Sterling to reference for creating these new sections. I hope I am up to this task.


I welcome any feedback or suggestions. Vince Emery (talk) 21:19, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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