De Casseres, Benjamin (1873–06 December 1945), author and journalist, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of David De Casseres, a printer, and Charlotte Davis. On his father’s side he was a collateral descendant of Spinoza. De Casseres left high school at thirteen and went to work as a four-dollar-a-week office boy for ...
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De Casseres, Benjamin (1873-1945), author and journalist
Jim Tuck
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De Casseres, Benjamin (1873-1945)
Maker: Arnold Genthe
In
Benjamin De Casseres Photograph by Arnold Genthe, 1925. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-G412-T-4766-008).
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Dennie, Joseph (1768-1812), essayist, critic, and editor
Jeffrey H. Richards
Dennie, Joseph (30 August 1768–07 January 1812), essayist, critic, and editor, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Joseph Dennie, a merchant, and Mary Green. To avoid the hostilities that threatened Boston, the family moved in 1775 to Lexington, Massachusetts, where they remained. In 1783 Dennie was sent back to Boston to prepare for a commercial career. After working for James Swan, Dennie went to live and study with the Reverend Samuel West of Needham, who prepared him for college. Dennie entered Harvard in 1787 as a sophomore; although suspended for the spring term in 1790 for insubordination to the tutors, he managed to graduate on time by continuing his studies with another minister in Groton. Soured by his collegiate experience, Dennie frequently denounced Harvard in both public and private writings....
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Dodge, Mary Abigail (1833-1896), author and journalist
Louise L. Stevenson
Dodge, Mary Abigail (31 March 1833–17 August 1896), author and journalist, best known as an under the pseudonym Gail Hamilton, was born in Hamilton, Massachusetts, the daughter of James Brown Dodge, a farmer, and Hannah Stanwood. Abby Dodge, as she preferred friends to call her, entered the Congregational church in her early years and enjoyed a country childhood marred only by an accident that permanently injured one eye. As a daughter of a family belonging to the landed gentry, Dodge received one of the best educations possible for a girl of her day. She benefited from her mother’s having been a schoolteacher before her marriage, and she attended the village school. At twelve she went to Cambridge for one year to attend a boarding school. The following year she moved to the Ipswich Female Seminary and graduated in 1850....
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Fullerton, William Morton (1865-1952), journalist and writer
Marion Mainwaring
Fullerton, William Morton (18 September 1865–26 August 1952), journalist and writer, was born in Norwich, Connecticut, the son of Bradford Morton Fullerton, a divinity student, and Julia Ball Fullerton. His father had temporarily dropped out of Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, but after the boy was born, he returned to complete the course, then went to serve a congregation in Palmer as minister. “Will” or “Morton” attended the village school and, briefly, Phillips Academy in Andover. Handsome, bright, and even as a child strangely magnetic, he was idolized by his parents, his younger brother, and his half-cousin Katharine (later ...
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Mencken, H. L. (1880-1956), author, editor, and journalist
Fred Hobson
Mencken, H. L. (12 September 1880–29 January 1956), author, editor, and journalist, was born Henry Louis Mencken in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of August Mencken, a cigar manufacturer, and Anna Abhau. Having emigrated from Germany during the mid-nineteenth century, the Menckens and Abhaus had quickly adapted to life in the United States, and they provided a home more Victorian than German-American for their four children. Henry Mencken, the eldest, did attend a private German school for his earliest education, but he completed his formal education at Baltimore Polytechnic, a high school primarily responsible for producing engineers and technicians....
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Mencken, H. L. (1880-1956)
Maker: Carl Van Vechten
In
H. L. Mencken Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1932. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-42489).
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Morley, Christopher Darlington (1890-1957), man of letters and editor
Robert L. Gale
Morley, Christopher Darlington (05 May 1890–28 March 1957), man of letters and editor, was born in Haverford, Pennsylvania, the son of Frank Morley, a mathematics professor at Haverford College, and Lilian Janet Bird, a musician and poet. She taught him to read, and he soon became a voracious reader. The family moved in 1900 to Baltimore, Maryland, where Morley’s father taught at Johns Hopkins University and Morley attended school and frequented the Enoch Pratt Library. He enrolled at Haverford College in 1906, published in the school’s ...
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Morley, Christopher Darlington (1890-1957)
Maker: Arnold Genthe
In
Christopher Morley Photograph by Arnold Genthe, 1930. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-G412-T-5716-017).
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Morris, Willie (1934-1999), writer and editor
Stacey Hamilton
Morris, Willie (29 November 1934–02 August 1999), writer and editor, was born William Weaks Morris in Jackson, Mississippi, the son of Henry Rae Morris, a gas station owner, and Marion Weaks Morris, a part-time piano teacher from a long line of Deep South gentility. Morris counted among his ancestors governors, senators, and the founders of Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now W.Va.). Born into the “old, impoverished, whipped-down South” ( ...
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Nye, Bill (1850-1896), American humorist and journalist
David B. Kesterson
Nye, Bill (25 August 1850–22 February 1896), American humorist and journalist, was born Edgar Wilson Nye in Shirley, Maine, the son of Franklin Nye, a lumberman, and Elizabeth Mitchell Loring. Nye actually grew up in Hudson, Wisconsin, where he “took [his] parents by the hand and gently led them” when he was but two, jested Nye years later. In Wisconsin he received nominal formal schooling. He tried his hand at farming, teaching, and studying law, but it was his interest in writing that developed most intensely and led him to write for small local newspapers. In fact, it was eventually his unsuccessful attempts to secure positions on Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers that prompted Nye to leave the Midwest and head west in the spring of 1876....
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Warner, Charles Dudley (1829-1900), author and editor
Robert L. Gale
Warner, Charles Dudley (12 September 1829–20 October 1900), author and editor, was born in Plainfield, Massachusetts, the son of Justus Warner and Sylvia Hitchcock, farmers. In 1837, three years after her husband died, Sylvia Warner took her two sons to a guardian in Charlemont, Massachusetts, and, in 1841, on to her brother in Cazenovia, New York. Warner attended classes at the Oneida Conference Seminary in Cazenovia, enrolled at Hamilton College, and graduated in 1851 with a B.A. While still a student he published articles in the ...
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Whitaker, Daniel Kimball (1801-1881), editor and essayist
Ronald Truman Farrar
Whitaker, Daniel Kimball (13 April 1801–24 March 1881), editor and essayist, was born in Sharon, Massachusetts, the son of the Reverend Jonathan Whitaker and Mary Kimball. He was the grandson of the Reverend Nathaniel Whitaker (1732–1795), a prominent theologian who had helped found Dartmouth College. His early education came from his father, a noted Congregationalist minister and eminent scholar. He later entered Harvard College, where he was awarded a B.A. degree in 1820 and an M.A. in 1823. His thesis, “The Literary Character of Dr. Samuel Johnson,” won him academic honors, as did his skills at oratory. He later studied theology and was licensed to preach, but his interests were already inclining toward journalism, and, while working on his master’s degree, he edited the ...
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Whiting, Lilian (1847-1942), journalist, essayist, and poet
Blanche Cox Clegg
Whiting, Lilian (03 October 1847–30 April 1942), journalist, essayist, and poet, was born Emily Lilian Whiting in Olcott, New York, the daughter of Lorenzo Dow Whiting, an educator and politician, and Lucretia Calista Clement, an educator. Her childhood was spent on a farm near Tiskilwa, Illinois. Both her parents were school principals in the area. Later, her father edited a local paper and served as representative and senator in the Illinois State legislature. Whiting was educated by her parents and tutors. “I do not remember learning to read,” Whiting said, “I was simply steeped, always and naturally as the sunshine, in the literary atmosphere of our quiet country home. The poets were my playmates, so to speak, my companions, my perpetual delight” (Rittenhouse, p. 4). The chief furnishings of her home, she said, were books and periodicals. She called herself a “dreamy and rudimentary girl who perceived the world as reflected through the pages of books rather than from outer realities themselves, and who was prone to regard the land of dreams as the only one worth living in” ( ...
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Whiting, Lilian (1847-1942)
In
Lilian Whiting Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-93461).
