Irwin Russell was born, June 3, 1853, at Port Gibson, Mississippi, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar. His restless nature and wayward disposition drove him from one place to another, from dissipation to dissipation, from a not too rugged health to an utter breakdown. In July, 1879, he was forced to leave New York, working his way down to New Orleans on a coast steamer, trying to rehabilitate himself as reporter on the New Orleans Picayune. But illness pursued him and the following December Russell died, cut off, in the midst of his promise, before he had reached his twenty-seventh year.

Although Russell did not take his poetry seriously and though the bulk of it is small, its influence has been large. Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris have acknowledged their indebtedness to him; the creator of Uncle Remus writing, “Irwin Russell was among the first—if not the very first—of Southern writers to appreciate the literary possibilities of the negro character.” He entered their life, appreciated their fresh turns of thought, saw things with that peculiar mixture of reverence and unconscious humor that is so integral a part of negro songs and spirituals. “Blessing the Dance” and “The Song of the Banjo” (from Russell’s operetta Christmas-Night in the Quarters, possibly his best known work) are excellent examples; faithful renderings of the mind of the old-fashioned, simple and sententious child of the plantation. In the latter poem the old story of Noah is told, with delightful additions, from the colorful angle of the darky; local in its setting, revealing in its quaint psychology.

A collection of his poems appeared, with an introduction by Joel Chandler Harris, in 1888. In 1917, a more inclusive volume, beautifully printed, with illustrations by E. W. Kemble, was published by The Century Co.; it was entitled Christmas-Night in the Quarters.

Russell died, in an obscure boarding house in New Orleans, December 23, 1879.