Many writers are deservedly forgotten, yet not every act of erasure is just. John Townsend Trowbridge (1827-1916) was a prolific American writer whose novels, plays, and poems, though critically acclaimed in his day, have with good reason not been remembered. He wrote one poem, however, that has been unfairly consigned to oblivion. Guy Vernon , a long seriocomic work about race, racism, and sexual intrigue in antebellum America, was first published in 1878 in A Masque of Poets , an anthology of anonymous poems featuring works by Louisa May Alcott, James Russell Lowell, Henry David Thoreau, and |