George E. Woodberry

George E. Woodberry (1851-1930) in The Book Buyer, Volume 8 (1892). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

George Edward Woodberry (May 12, 1855 - 1930) was an American poet and literary critic.

Life

Family

Woodberry was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, on May 12th, 1855. The Woodberrys or Woodburys — various spellings of the name exist — immigrated early and, since settlement took root on the North Shore, have been native to Beverly and neighboring seaport towns.

Youth and education

Receiving his preparation at the Phillips Exeter Academy, George entered Harvard College in 1872. Owing, however, to ill health, he was unable to continue with his class. He re-entered in 1875 and was graduated in 1877.

Woodberry took highest final honors in philosophy, and was awarded an Oration at Commencement. This essay, on the Relation of Pallas Athene to Athens, owes its preservation in a permanent form to the fact that he was forbidden to deliver it, because of the disapproval of its substance by the Committee of the Faculty in charge. His college friends asked his consent to print for him a small edition, copies of which are now rare. This and his early college poems, of which there is a selection in ‘’Verses from the Harvard Advocate’’ (1876), were his first-fruits.

Career

Woodberry at Columbia University, from The Critic, 1903. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

In 1877-1878 Woodberry was acting professor of English and history in the University of Nebraska (UN). In 1878 he went to New York as an assistant editor on The Nation, and in the following year, moved to Cambridge, where he continued his editorial work, besides contributing to the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's.

In 1880 he was recalled to Nebraska, where for 2 years he held the English professorship; but at the end of that time, together with several associates in the Faculty, he was dismissed from his chair.

Woodberry went to Italy in 1885, but soon returned, apparently disheartened with his journey, in which he saw much in foreign conditions of life to distress and disturb him. Soon after this experience, came his My Country. It first appeared in a very limited separate impression; then in the Atlantic Monthly and in 1888, Professor John K. Paine, using the poem as a libretto, composed a cantata, A Song of Praise, which was performed at the Festival at Cincinnati in that year. Woodberry again visited Italy in the winter of 1888-89, this time in happier mood. During 1890, the North Shore Watch, and Other Poems, and Studies in Letters and Life were published.

For 12 years, Woodberry was an almost constant writer to the literary portion of The Nation. He also, during Aldrich's editorship, was anonymously, and for this reason able, the more forcibly, to asser his critical strength in the Atlantic Monthly. He contributed a paper to the Fortnightly Review in 1882, and during 1888 wrote regularly, mostly upon literary topics, for the Boston Post. He also wrote compositions in the National Studies in American Letters and Columbia University Studies in comparative literature.

In 1891-1904 he was professor of comparative literature at Columbia University.

At home

His summers were spent in Beverly, his winters in Boston, where he lived quietly among a few friends. To him younger men go easily, sure that he remembers the days of his own youth and loves theirs the better for it.

Writing

In the fall of 1882, the History of Wood-Engraving (Harpers) appeared, written, not in a technical manner, but in pleasing, cultivated sympathy with the subject as a study in art. The next 2 years were quietly but busily spent in Beverly.

The North Shore Watch: A threnody was originally printed in 1883 in a private edition of 200 copies.

In 1884 Woodberry published Edgar Allan Poe, part of the "American Men of Letters Series", and the work by which its author is perhaps most widely known. It became almost immediately the recognized authority on Edgar Allan Poe, and did a true service to American literature in dispelling some myths of popular tradition.

The Book Buyer: “The critical reach of Mr. Woodberry's mind is well shown in the soundness and judgment of the study of Poe, in the essay on Keats, in the remarkable paper on the Byron centenary, and in the sober admiration for Shelley shot through nearly all he has written. In the Threnody, in his sonnets, and single poems like "Victor's Bird," we learn something of his strength and sweetness. It has been said of his poetry that there is no "love" in it, and yet the work of his fullest expression, "Agathon", is wholly of Love. The spirit of beauty, and a zeal for a wisely tempered democracy—these are on every page. In his prose he seems to deliver the burden of what he feels that he ought to say, whether in softness or in firmness; in his verses one may easily discover what most the poet cherishes. He takes nobody by storm; like the kingdom of heaven, but unlike so many of his craft, he does not come by violence, either in his personal appearance and manners or in the structure and form of his thought.”

Quotations

"Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure." - Quoted by Michael Zahler, distinguished gentleman of class and leisure.

"The sense that someone else cares always helps, because it is the sense of love"

Recognition

Woodberry was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1930 he was posthumously awarded 1 of the original 3 Frost Medals for lifetime achievement in poetry by the Poetry Society of America.

Publications

Poetry

• North Shore Watch: A threnody. Cambridge, MA: privately published by John Wilson & Son, 1883.
• My Country: An ode. 1887.
• The North Shore Watch, and other poems. New York: Macmillan, 1890, 1893, 1899.
• Wild Eden. New York: Macmillan, 1899.
• Poems. New York: Macmillan, 1903.
• The Kingdom of All Souls, and two other poems for Christmas. Boston: Woodberry Society, 1912.
• The Flight, and other poems. New York: Macmillan: 1914, 1921.
• The Ideal Passion: Sonnets. Boston: Merrymount Press, for Woodberry Society, 1917.
• The Roamer, and other poems. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Howe, 1921.
• Selected Poems. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1933.

Non-fiction

• The Relation of the Pallas Athena to Athens. Cambridge, MA: privately published for the Signet Society, 1877.
• Mary Wolestoncroft. Boston: Atlantic Monthly, 1880; Gainesville, FL: Oriole Press, 1964.
• A History of Wood Engraving. New York: Harper, 1883; Bristol, UK: Thoemmes, 1998; Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2003..
• Edgar Allan Poe. Boston: Houghton Mifflin (American Men of Letters}, 1885.
• Studies in Letters and Life. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, for Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1890.
• Shelley's Work. Concord, NH: Century Press, 1892.
• Heart of Man, and other papers. London & New York: Macmillan, 1899.
• Makers of Literature (essays). New York: Macmillan, 1900.
• Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1902.
• One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature. New York: De Vinne Press, for the Grolier Club, 1902.
• The Appreciation of Literature. New York: Baker & Taylor, 1902; New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1907; Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1969.
• America in Literature. New York & London: Harper, 1903.
• Swinburne. New York: McClure Phillips, 1905; London: Heinemann, 1905; Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1965.
• The Torch: Eight lectures on race power in literature. London & New York: McClure, Phillips, 1905; New York: Macmillan, 1912; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York: Macmillan (English Men of Letters), 1907.
• Great Writers. New York: McClure, 1907.
• Life of Edgar Allan Poe. (2 volumes), Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1909. Volume I, Volume II
• The Inspiration of Poetry (lectures). New York: Macmillan, 1910.
• Wendell Phillips: The faith of an American. Boston: U.B. Updike, for the Woodberry Society, 1912.
• A Day at Castrogiovanni. Boston: Woodberry Society, 1912.
• North Africa and the Desert: Scenes and moods. New York: Scribner, 1914.
• Two Phases of Criticism. Boston: Merrymount Press, for the Woodberry Society, 1914.
• Shakespeare: An address. Boston: Merrymount Press, for the Woodberry Society, 1916.
• Literary Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Howe, 1920; London: Selwyn & Blount, 1920.
• The Torch, and other lectures and addresses. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Howe, 1920.
• Literary Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1921; Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1969.
• Studies of a Litterateur. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1921.
• Taormina (essay). New York: Columbia University Press, 1926.
• Makers of Literature: Essays. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970.

Edited

• Percy Bysshe Shelley, Complete Poetical Works. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, for Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892-1898.
• Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia / Last Essays of Elia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1892.
• Aubrey de Vere, Selections from the Poems. New York & London, 1894.
• Edgar Allan Poe, Works (edited with Edmund Clarence Stedman). (10 volumes), Chicago: Stone & Kimball, 1894-1895.
• Rupert Brooke, Collected Poems. New York: John Lane, 1915; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1915.

Letters

• European Years: Letters of an idle man. London: Constable / Boston & New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1912.
• A Scholar's Testement: Two letters. Amenia, NY: privately published at the Troutbeck Press, 1931; Flcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions, 1969.
• Selected Letters. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1933; St. Clair Shores, MI: Scholarly Press, 1971.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

TOP 20 George E. Woodberry Quotes

• List of U.S. poets
• List of literary critics

References

Fonds

• George Woodberry Papers, 1866-1951 at Columbia University
• Woodberry Poetry Room Collection at Houghton Library, Harvard University

External links

Poems

• from Wild Eden
• George Edward Woodberry at PoemHunter (22 poems)
• George Edward Woodberry at Wikisource

Books

• Works by George Edward Woodberry at Project Gutenberg
• Woodberry, George Edward 1855-1930 at Amazon.com

About

• George Edward Woodberry in the Columbia Encyclopedia.
• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.. Original article is at: