While almost forgotten today, George Henry Boker was a well-known poet, playwright, and diplomat in the mid-19th century. He was originally trained as a lawyer but after traveling in Europe, he was inspired to become a writer instead. He published a few books of unremarkable lyric poetry in the 1840s and then turned to drama, becoming one of the most successful American playwrights by the mid-1850s. He specialized in blank verse romantic tragedies, usually in historical European settings; his best known was the 1855 Francesca da Rimini. In the 1860s, he returned to writing lyric poetry, especially sonnets.