He was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, the second son of Peter Bryant, a prominent doctor. Educated at Williams College he went on to study law at Worthington and Bridgewater, he was admitted to the bar in 1815.
Interested in poetry since childhood his first published work was a book of verse, The Embargo (1808) and his first critically acclaimed work was the poem Thanatopsis (1817) which appeared in the North American Review. Writing in a English romantic style and celebrating the countryside of New England his work was well received.
He worked as a lawyer in Plainfield and Great Barrington until 1825 when he married and moved to New York City and worked for the New York Review and then the New York Evening Post.
At first an associate editor, he became editor in 1829 and remained in that post until his death, the driving force of a liberal and literate paper he was strongly anti-slavery.