RICHARD HENRY DANA (born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1787) was author of a small volume, The Buccaneer, and other Poems (1827), which was hailed as an original and powerful contribution to American literature. He had previously published The Dying Raven, a poem (1825), and contributed essays to a periodical work. The Buccaneer is founded on a tradition of a murder committed on an island on the coast of New England by a pirate, and has passages of vivid, dark painting resembling the style of Crabbe.