Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Born	December 22, 1823(1823-Template:MONTHNUMBER-22) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	May 9, 1911(1911-Template:MONTHNUMBER-09) (aged 87) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	Minister, author, soldier

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (December 22, 1823 - May 9, 1911) was an American poet, prose author, soldier, and Unitarian minister, perhaps best known today as a mentor of poet Emily Dickinson.

Life

Family, youth, education

Higginson was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the December 22, 1823. He was a descendant of Francis Higginson (1588–1630), who emigrated from Leicestershire to the colony of Massachusetts Bay and was a minister of the church of Salem, Mass., in 1629–1630; and a grandson of Stephen Higginson (1743–1828), a Boston merchant, who was a member of the Continental Congress in 1783, took an active part in suppressing Shay’s Rebellion, was the author of the “Laco” letters (1789), and rendered valuable services to the United States government as navy agent from May 11 to June 22, 1798.

Thomas attended Harvard University, graduating in 1841.

Career

After graduation, Higginson was a schoolmaster for 2 years, studied theology at the Harvard Divinity School, and was pastor in 1847-1850 of the First Religious Society (Unitarian) of Newburyport, Massachusetts, and of the Free Church at Worcester in 1852-1858.

Higginson married Mary Channing in 1847 after graduating from divinity school. Mary was the daughter of Dr. Walter Channing, a pioneer in the field of obstetrics and gynecology who taught at Harvard University; the niece of Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing; and the sister of Henry David Thoreau's friend, poet Ellery Channing. The couple had no children but raised Margaret Fuller Channing, the eldest daughter of Ellen Fuller and Ellery Channing. Ellen was the sister of Transcendentalist and feminist author Margaret Fuller.

Higginson was a Free Soil candidate for Congress (1850), but was defeated; was indicted with Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker for participation in the attempt to release fugitive slave Anthony Burns in Boston (1853); was engaged in the effort to make Kansas a free state after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854; and during the Civil War was captain in the 51st Massachusetts Volunteers, and from November 1862 to October 1864, when he was retired because of a wound received in the preceding August, was colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the earliest regiment recruited from former slaves for the Federal service. He described his experiences in Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870).

In politics Higginson was successively a Free Soil Party member, a Republican, an Independent and a Democrat.

2 years after his wife Mary's death in 1877, Higginson married Mary Potter Thacher, with whom he had 2 daughters, only 1 of whom survived into adulthood.

Among his numerous books are Outdoor Papers (1863); Malbone: An Oldport romance (1869); Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (in “American Men of Letters” series, 1884); A Larger History of the United States of America to the Close of President Jackson’s Administration (1885); The Monarch of Dreams (1886); Travellers and Outlaws (1889); The Afternoon Landscape (1889), poems and translations; Life of Francis Higginson (in “Makers of America,” 1891); Concerning All of Us (1892); The Procession of the Flowers and Kindred Papers (1897); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (in “American Men of Letters” series, 1902); John Greenleaf Whittier (in “English Men of Letters” series, 1902); A Reader’s History of American Literature (1903, the Lowell Institute lectures for 1903, edited by Henry W. Boynton); and Life and Times of Stephen Higginson (1907).

In his Common Sense About Women (1881) and his Women and Men (1888) he advocated equality of opportunity and equality of rights for the 2 sexes.

Relationship with Emily Dickinson

Higginson is remembered as a correspondent and literary mentor to the poet Emily Dickinson.

In April 1862, Higginson published an article in the Atlantic Monthly, titled "Letter to a Young Contributor," in which he advised budding young writers to step up. Emily Dickinson, a 32-year-old woman from Amherst, Massachusetts sent a letter to Higginson, enclosing 4 poems and asking, "Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?" (Letter 261) He was not – his reply included gentle "surgery" (that is, criticism) of Dickinson's raw, odd verse, questions about Dickinson's personal and literary background, and a request for more poems.

Higginson's next reply contained high praise, causing Dickinson to reply that it "gave no drunkenness" only because she had "tasted rum before"; she still, though, had "few pleasures so deep as your opinion, and if I tried to thank you, my tears would block my tongue" (Letter 265). But in the same letter, Higginson warned her against publishing her poetry because of its unconventional form and style.

Gradually, Higginson became Dickinson's mentor and "preceptor," though he almost felt out of Dickinson's league. "The bee himself did not evade the schoolboy more than she evaded me," he wrote, "and even at this day I still stand somewhat bewildered, like the boy." ("Emily Dickinson's Letters," Atlantic Monthly, October 1891) After Dickinson died, Higginson collaborated with Mabel Loomis Todd] in publishing volumes of her poetry – heavily edited in favor of conventional punctuation, diction, and rhyme. In White Heat (Knopf, 2008), an account of Higginson's friendship with Dickinson, author Brenda Wineapple credits Higginson with more editorial sensitivity than literary historians have assumed. Higginson's intellectual prominence helped gain favor for Dickinson's altered but still startling and strange poetry.

Later years

In 1906 Higginson joined with Jack London and Upton Sinclair to form the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.

Higginson died May 9, 1911. Although his death record states that he was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he is actually buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the intersection of Riverview, Lawn, and Prospect paths.

Writing

Higinson's writings show a deep love of nature, art and humanity, and are marked by vigor of thought, sincerity of feeling, and grace and finish of style. His volumes of reminiscence, Cheerful Yesterdays (1898), Old Cambridge (1899), Contemporaries (1899), and Part of a Man’s Life (1905), are characteristic and charming works.

His collected works were published in 7 volumes in 1900.

Publications

Poetry

• The Afternoon Landscape: Poems and translations. Longmans, 1889.

Novels

• Malbone: An Oldport Romance. Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1869.
• The Monarch of Dreams. Boston: Lee & Sheppard, 1887.

Short fiction

• Oldport Days. Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1873.
• Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic. New York: Grossett & Dunlap, 1898; London: Macmillan, 1898.
  • also published as Tales of Atlantis and the Enchanted Islands. North Hollywood, CA: Newcastle, 1977; San Bernardino, CA: Borgo, 1980.

Non-fiction

• Woman and Her Wishes: An essay. Robhester, NY: Steam Press of Curtis Butts, 1853.
• Outdoor Papers. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863.
• Army Life in a Black Regiment. Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1870.
• Atlantic Essays. Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1871.
• A Book of American Explorers. Boston: Lee & Sheppard, 1877.
• Common Sense About Women. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1881.
• Women and the Alphabet: A series of essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1881.
• English Statesmen. New York: Putnam, 1881.
• Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Boston: Hughton Mifflin (American Men of Letters), 1884.
• A Larger History of the United States of America to the Close of President Jackson's Administration. New York: Harper, 1885; London: Sampson, Low, 1885.
• Unsolved Problems in Woman Suffrage. New York: J.J. Hill, 1887.
• Travellers and Outlaws: Episodes in modern American history. Boston: Lee & Sheppard / New York: C.T. Dillingham, 1889.
• Life of Francis Higginson. New York: Dodd, Mead (Makers of America), 1891.
• Concerning All of Us. New York: Harper, 1892.
• The Procession of the Flowers and Kindred Papers (1897)
• Cheerful Yesterdays. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1898.
• Old Cambridge. London & New York: Macmillian, 1899.
• Contemporaries. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1899.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin (American Men of Letters), 1902.
• John Greenleaf Whittier. New York: Macmillan (English Men of Letters), 1902.
• A Readers History of American Literature (edited by Henry W Boynton). 1903), the Lowell Institute lectures for 1903,
• Part of a Man's Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin / Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1905; London: Constable, 1905.
• Life and Times of Stephen Higginson. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1907.
• Carlyle's Laugh and Other Surprises. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin / Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1909.
• Descendants of the Rev. Francis Higginson. Cambridge, MA: 1910.

Collected editions

• Writings. (7 volumes), Boston: Houghton Mifflin / Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1900.
• The Magnificent Activist: The writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911) (edited by Howard N. Meyer). Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2000. ISBN 0-306-80954-0

Letters and journals

• Letters and Journals, 1846-1906 (edited by Mary Potter Thacher Higginson). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921.

Translated

• Petrarch, Fifteen Sonnets of Petrarch. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1903.

Edited

• Negro Spirituals. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867.
• Emily Dickinson, Collected Poems (edited with Mabel Loomis Todd). New York: Gramercy, 1890.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Higginson, Thomas Wentworth". Encyclopædia Britannica. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 455. 
• Marc A. Bauch, Extending the Canon: Thomas Wentworth Higginson and African-American Spirituals. Munich, Germany: Grin, 2013
• Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. New York: Knopf, 2008. ISBN 978-1-4000-4401-6. plus Author Interview at the Pritzker Military Library on February 20, 2009
• Edelstein, Tilden G. Strange Enthusiasm: A Life of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.
• Meyer, Howard N. Colonel of the Black Regiment: The Life of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1967.
• Meyer, Howard N., ed. The Magnificent Activist: The Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1823–1911. DaCapo Press, 2000.
• Wells, Anna Mary. Dear Preceptor: The Life and Times of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963

Fonds

• Thomas Wentworth Higginson Correspondence (MS Am 1162.10), Houghton Library, Harvard University
• Thomas Wentworth Higginson: Correspondence from the Carlton and Territa Lowenberg Collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries' Archives & Special Collections

External links

Poems

• 2 poems by Higginson: "The Snowing of the Pines," "The February Hush"
• Thomas Wentworth Higginson at English Poetry (6 poems)
• Thomas Wentworth Higginson at PoemHunter (7 poems)
• Thomas Wentworth Higginson at AllPoetry (7 poems)

Audio / video

• File:Speaker Icon.svg Thomas Wentworth Higginson public domain audiobooks from LibriVox

Books

• Works by Thomas Wentworth Higginson at Project Gutenberg

About

• Thomas Wentworth Higginson at My Poetic Side
• Colonel Higginson dead at the Harvard Crimson
• American National Biography Online:Thomas Wentworth Higginson
• Biography, Works and Photos at the Worcester Writers' Project
• A Ride Through Kanzas from the Antislavery Literature Project

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at: Higginson, Thomas Wentworth