George Edward Woodberry

George Edward Woodberry, Litt. D., LL. D. (May 12, 1855 – January 2, 1930) was an American literary critic and poet.

Biography Education Woodberry was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, on May 12, 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. Receiving his preparation at the Phillips Exeter Academy, he entered Harvard College in 1872. He was unable to finish his class, though, due to his poor health. He returned in 1875, and he earned his degree 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.

Professorship In 1877-78 he was acting Professor of English and History in the University of Nebraska. 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 two 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, as a result of one of those contests usual in the early life of Western colleges.

Works 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 two years were quietly but busily spent in Beverly. The North Shore Watch: a Threnody, was first printed in 1883 in a private edition of two hundred copies. His Edgar Allan Poe, one of the marked successes of the "American Men of Letters Series", was published two years later. It made Woodberry a recognized authority on Poe, and did a true service to American literature in dispelling some myths of popular tradition.

In 1891–1904 he was professor of comparative literature at Columbia University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He wrote a number of books as well. Studies in Letters and Life (1890) Heart of Man (1899) Wild Eden (1899) Makers of Literature (1900) Nathaniel Hawthorne (1902) America in Literature (1903) Swinburne (1905) The Torch: Eight Lectures on Race Power in Literature (1905) Emerson (1907) The Appreciation of Literature (1907) Great Writers (1907) Life of Poe (two volumes, 1909) The Inspiration of Poetry (1910) Wendell Phillips (1912) A Day at Castrogiovanni (1912) North Africa and the Desert (1914) Two Phases of Criticism (1914) Ideal Passion | Sonnets (1917)

Other publications: Edgar Allan Poe in the "American Men of Letters" series (1885) The North Shore Watch, and Other Poems (1890) Works of Edgar Allan Poe (ten volumes, 1895) With Edmund Clarence Stedman Collected Poems (1903) The Kingdom of All Souls, poems, (1912) The Flight and Other Poems (1914)

He edited The complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1892); Lamb's Essays of Elia (1892); The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, with E. C. Stedman (1895); and Select Poems of Aubrey de Vere (1894). He wrote compositions in the "National Studies in American Letters," and Columbia University Studies in Comparative Literature, (nine volumes).

Quotes "Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure..."

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

"If you can't have faith in what is held up to you for faith, you must find things to believe in yourself, for a life without faith in something is too narrow a space to live."