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

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. Owing, however, to ill health, he was unable to continue with his class. He re-entered in 1875 and was graduated in 1877. Another distinguished member was the then Governor of Massachusetts. 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. Two years later was published his Edgar Allan Poe, one of the marked successes of the "American Men of Letters Series", and the work by which its author is perhaps most widely known. It became almost at once the recognized authority on Poe, and did a true service to American literature in dispelling some myths of popular tradition.

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 twelve 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 assert his critical strength in the Atlantic Monthly. He contributed one paper to the Fortnightly Review in 1882, and during 1888 wrote regularly, mostly upon literary topics, for the Boston Post. He contributed the entry on American Literature to the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910) under the initials "G.E.W.".

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. After his death in 1930, he was posthumously awarded one of the first three Frost Medals for lifetime achievement in poetry by the Poetry Society of America. The Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University is named in his honor.

Courtesy--wikipedia
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