Barrett Wendell

Barrett Wendell (August 23, 1855 – February 8, 1921) was an American academic known for a series of textbooks including English Composition, studies of Cotton Mather and William Shakespeare, A Literary History of America, The France of Today, and The Traditions of European Literature.

Early life Wendell was born in Boston on August 23, 1855. He was the son of Jacob and Mary Bertodi ( Barrett) Wendell. Among his three younger brothers were Gordon Wendell, philanthropist and athlete Evert Jansen Wendell, and actor Jacob Wendell.

His paternal grandparents were Jacob Wendell Sr. and Mehitable Rindge ( Rogers) Wendell. The first Wendell, Evert Jansen, left the Netherlands in 1640 and settled in Albany, New York. His maternal grandparents were Boston merchant Nathaniel Augustus Barrett and Sally ( Dorr) Barrett. Both the Barrett and Dorr families had deep roots in colonial America, with the Dorrs making their fortune in the fur trade.

In 1904 to 1905, he travelled overseas, and lectured at Cambridge University in England, the Sorbonne in Paris, and other French universities. After this visit he wrote The France of Today.

Personal life

On June 1, 1880, Wendell was married to Edith Greenough (1859–1938) at Quincy, Massachusetts.

Barrett Wendell Jr. (1881–1973), an investment banker who married Barbara Higginson, granddaughter of the founder of Lee, Higginson & Co. Edith Wendell (1893–1963), who married publisher and Mayor of Auburn, New York Charles Devens Osborne in 1913.

Wendell died in Boston on February 8, 1921. His widow died in Boston in October 1938.

Descendants Through his daughter Mary, he was a grandfather of Reiner Garrit Anton van der Woude Jr., who married his second cousin, Lady Anne Penelope Herbert, a daughter of Henry Herbert, 6th Earl of Carnarvon and the former Anne Catherine Tredick Wendell (Wendell's niece).

Selected works The Duchess Emilia: A romance, Boston: James R. Osgood and Co., 1885. Cotton Mather, the Puritan priest, New York, Dodd, Mead and Co., 1891. English composition: Eight lectures given at the Lowell Institute, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891. Some neglected characteristics of the New England Puritans, 1892 William Shakespeare, a study in Elizabethan literature, New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1894. Rankell’s remains: An American novel, New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1896. A literary history of America, New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1901. Ralegh in Guiana, Rosamond, and a Christmas Masque, New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1902 (Boston: Merrymount Press) The France of today, New York: C. Scribner, 1907. The privileged classes, New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1908. The mystery of education, and other academic performances, New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1909. The traditions of European literature, from Homer to Dante, New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1920.