Author, Poet. John Luckey McCreery was an American poet best known for the poem, "There is No Death." He was the son of a poor Methodist minister, whose income was barely sufficient for the support of his family, and his early life was difficult. Most of his education was gained from borrowed books. When he was 17, he moved to Illinois, where his poor health and growing literary tastes encouraged him to take up writing. He began by learning printing, but soon took the position of assistant editor of a country newspaper. When he was 21 he went to Iowa, and became local editor of the Dubuque Times. He was also a clerk in the Office of the Assistant Attorney General in Iowa. “There Is No Death” was written in the early spring of 1863, when he was living in Delaware county, Iowa. One night, as he was riding home in the evening, the theme of the poem came to mind, and the first stanza was written in his mind. He worked on the poem during the next succeeding weeks until it was completed. It was published in Arthur’s Home Magazine in July, 1863. The poem was reprinted in The Delaware County Journal and credited to Arthur Home Magazine. Eugene Bulmer, a writer for the Farmer’s Advocate in Chicago, wrote an article titled “Immorality,” concluding his article with the poem. The essay was signed with his name after the poem, with no credit given. A friend of the poet’s wrote to the editor of the Farmer’s Advocate, claiming the poem for him, but it was too late. A Wisconsin paper then cut off the poetry from the article and printed it with the name of E. Bulmer attached, then another Wisconsin editor reprinted it, and supposing that he had discovered an error in the type, changed the “m” to a “w” and so the poem was attributed to Lord Edward Bulwer Lytton, of England, who had never seen or heard of it. The name of Bulwer gave to the poem great notoriety, and in a very short time it was being copied all over the country, and from American journals was recopied in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Australia. It began to appear in school books and in various collections of poetry. In 1870 a publisher included the poem in one of their school readers, accrediting it to Bulwer-Lytton. When the true author discovered it, he wrote to them of the mistake, and in order to confirm authorship of the poem, they wrote a letter to the son of Lord Lytton, asking whether or not his father had written the poem. He stated that his father had not written it, and neither he nor any of his family had ever heard of it. The publisher corrected their printings in 1874. He moved to Washington in 1878, and served with a congressional committee that went to the South to investigate election frauds, served with several other congressional committees, held a position in the Post Office Department, and was an assistant attorney in the Interior Department. In 1883, he published a new volume of his poems, among which was “There Is No Death,” which he had revised a great deal; in the revised poem there are 16 verses instead of 10.