William Ellery Channing was born in Boston, MA on November 29, 1818. He is the nephew of his equally famous, older uncle, the Boston Unitarian minister with the same name. Since they were contemporaries, the younger Channing was usually called Ellery Channing.
Ellery Channing attended Boston Latin School and then Harvard College, but left before graduating. In 1842 he married Ellen Fuller the sister of the Transcendentalist author Margaret Fuller. Together they settled in Concord, MA near author Nathaniel Hawthorne. There he became friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Alcott Family, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and especially Henry David Thoreau.
In 1843 Channing published his first volume of poems that he originally published in the literary journal The Dial. During his life Ellery Channing published the following poems.
The Hillside Cot
The Mountain
The Barren Moors
And Here The Hermit Sat
From: A Poet's Hope
Memory
Sea Song
Edith
The Earth-Spirit
Tears In Spring
Here Let Us Live And Spend Away Our Lives
Sleepy Hollow
Hymn Of The Earth
My Symphony
The poem Tears in Spring was a lament for his friend Henry David Thoreau. The poem Sleepy Hollow was written for the dedication of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
In 1873, Ellery Channing published Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist. It was the the first biography of Henry David Thoreau.
Ellery Channing died on December 23, 1901. He is buried on Authors Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery behind the family plot of Nathaniel Hawthorn and opposite the path from the family plot of his friend Henry David Thoreau.