Louis How

Who was Louis How?

Louis How was a prolific twentieth-century poet and a biographer of his grandfather, James Buchanan Eads, who built the Eads Bridge crossing the Mississippi River at St. Louis.

How had one brother, James Eads How. Not only was their grandfather a wealthy engineer and contractor, but their father, James Flintham How, was a vice-president and the General Manager of the Wabash Railroad. Thus they were the heirs of one of St. Louis's most wealthy families. While his brother chose to live as a hobo and spent his efforts trying to help the homeless, Louis How "became an artist and took to the gay bohemian life".

While How certainly wrote from a position of knowledge and authority when he created the biography of his grandfather, the biography was criticized in a review from MIT.

Before his poetry was first published, How had compiled a manuscript anthology of American poetry, but never published it. His manuscript was responsible for a revival of interest in early American poet Frederick Goddard Tuckerman.