Background

Bliss Perry was born on November 25, 1860, in Williamstown, Massachusetts; the son of Arthur Latham Perry, a farmer, and Mary (Smedley) Perry.

Education

Young Perry grew up amid what Simon called “an essentially Arcadian life in which honesty, fairmindedness, and decency were the rules of behavior.” He was both a rural lad, doing farm chores and enjoying the Berkshires, and a studious boy who took advantage of the large stock of books in his house. As a consequence, he had an affinity for writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who represented the old New England.

Bliss attended Williams College, and there received an education in the classics; he also studied rhetoric and became known as a debater and speech-maker. He graduated in 1881 with the prize for elocution and extemporaneous speaking, so that when a professorship in rhetoric and public speaking became available at the end of the year, he was a natural choice to fill the role. He excelled as a teacher, and in his spare time took up the study of French and German along with Old English. At this point, he was determined to become a philologist.

Perry was made a full professor in 1886 and given a two-year sabbatical to study philology in Germany - at that time the center for such study. He studied at the University of Berlin and the University of Strasbourg but declined to write the dissertation and stand for the oral examination that would enable him to claim a Ph.D. During the course of his immersion in linguistic and textual criticism, Perry had decided not to follow classical philology, but rather to pursue aesthetics.

Career

In 1888, in the United States, Bliss resumed his teaching duties, though he expanded his course offerings to include Anglo-Saxon prose - which he persuaded the college to make a requirement - and Chaucer, reflecting the course of his studies in Germany. He had published a few stories before leaving for Germany, but after his return, they began to find print in magazines such as Scribners and the Atlantic Monthly with increasing frequency. Encouraged, Perry wrote what would be his first novel, The Broughton House, which was published in 1890 by Scribners. The book was a frank - for its time - portrayal of marital conflict, though it resolved on a sentimental note with the wife taking her own life. The book was popular, and further enhanced Perry’s growing reputation. He caught the eye of Princeton University and was lured there in 1893 to be the chair of oratory and aesthetic criticism.

Perry published a volume of stories, Salem Kittredge and Other Stories, in 1894, and in 1895 he came out with a second novel, The Plated City. Meanwhile, Perry was teaching a variety of courses at Princeton, ranging from an English literature survey course for freshmen to graduate seminars on Robert Browning, and enjoying Princeton’s more cosmopolitan atmosphere. In 1897, he had begun to edit Little Masterpieces, an eighteen-volume set intended for schoolrooms. While the project did not make money, Perry was nonetheless proud of it, feeling that he was helping to elevate ’literary taste in the United States by placing some of the best work of the greatest writers within reach of everybody’. In the meantime, he was appointed the Holmes Professor of English and Belles Lettres at Princeton. In 1899, Perry published another collection of short stories, titled The Powers at Play. Most of the stories were reprinted from the magazines in which they had originally been published, and they had an overriding theme of the clash between the rural New England Yankee tradition and the increasingly industrial and ethnic city culture. This would be the end of Perry’s solid fiction career - the rest of his professional life was centered on teaching, editing, and writing critical essays.

In 1899, Perry assumed the helm at the Atlantic Monthly; he was a good choice, able to combine a deep understanding of the New England literary tradition, which had made the magazine’s reputation, with an understanding and appreciation for the new culture that was beginning to supplant it. As editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Perry moderated the two impulses that had governed the magazine’s past: the urge toward a broad political outlook and a more elite journal of ideas and literature. He left his teaching post at Princeton in 1900 and moved to Boston, the magazine’s base. There, he became part of the Boston elite, gaining membership in the Saturday Club, whose distinguished membership included Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hawthorne, and John Greenleaf Whittier. During the time he was editor, he also became the senior literary advisor at Houghton Mifflin, and, in addition to overseeing other Houghton Mifflin efforts such as the Riverside Literature series, he issued a fourteen-volume set of Henry David Thoreau’s journals and a ten-volume set of Emerson’s journals. He continued to support the established New England poets, such as by publishing a brief literary biography of Whittier in 1907.

In 1902, Bliss had begun publishing literary criticism as well. A Study of Prose Fiction became extremely popular for two decades; in this work, he argued for the preeminence of James Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne, and Poe. In 1906, he published Walt Whitman: His Life and Work, offending people on both sides of the Whitman question with his measured approach, but ultimately contributing greatly to the hook’s centrality within the American canon. In 1904 Perry had taught one course at Harvard substituting for another professor who was on leave. Harvard’s president was anxious to make Perry part of the faculty, and although he first declined because of his commitment to the magazine, Perry finally agreed given the stipulation that he would only teach part-time until his tenure at the Atlantic Monthly had ended.

In 1906, Bliss accepted the position at Harvard and continued teaching there until he retired in 1930, publishing a variety of critical works along the way, including Thomas Carlyle: How to Know Him in 1915. Perry had conceived of a magnum opus, which was to be a comprehensive history of American literature. As he continued on with the task, however, he uncharacteristically abandoned it, losing faith in his conclusions and in his ability to speak to the new Zeitgeist. Like many others, it was difficult for Perry to keep up with the times. He ignored more experimental writers like Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser. The project was never completed. Still, he continued on as a popular teacher, and published a memorable volume of his lectures on Emerson, called Emerson Today, in 1931. Bliss retired to Exeter, New Hampshire, where he lived quietly until his death on February 13, 1954, at the age of 93.

Achievements

• Bliss Perry is known as a prolific writer of novels, short fiction, essays, studies in poetry, and an autobiography. He is famed in certain Vermont lore for "establishing" the "summer colony" of Greensboro, Vermont. Perry was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French. He was also instrumental in defending Emerson’s reputation for a new generation of readers.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Plated City

    (Published in 1895, and long out of print, The Plated City...)

    1895
  • The American Spirit in Literature

    (The American Spirit in Literature A Chronicle of Great In...)

    1918
  • The Amateur Spirit

    (The half dozen essays that are printed in this volume hav...)

    1904
  • The American Mind

    (The American Mind By Bliss Perry te literature without kn...)

    1912
  • Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson, Vol. 1

    (The material for a life of Henry Lee Higginson is abundan...)

    1921
  • The Broughton House 1890
  • Salem Kittredge, and Other Stories 1894
  • The Powers at Play 1899
  • A Study of Poetry 1902
  • Walt Whitman: His Life And Work 1906
  • John Greenleaf Whittier: A Sketch of His Life 1907
  • Park-Street Papers 1908
  • Thomas Carlyle; How to Know Him 1915
  • Fishing with a Worm 1916
  • Pools and Ripples; Fishing Essays 1927
  • Emerson Today 1931
  • Richard Henry Dana, 1851-1931 1933
  • And Gladly Teach: Reminiscences 1935
  • Sir Walter Scott's Woodstock 1899
  • Selections From Edmund Burke 1896
  • The Heart of Emerson's Journals 1926

Membership

Bliss was a member of the American Academy Arts and Letters and Massachusetts History Society.

Personality

Bliss Perry epitomized ethical ideals, refined manners, and traditional literary forms. While other authors were busy eschewing its strong moralism, Perry was able to make the New England tradition palatable for a new century, tempering its rigor with his acute eye for aesthetic experimentation.

Fly fishing was one of his key hobbies, which led to the publication of "Fishing With a Worm."

Quotes from others about the person

• "Perry’s blend of open-mindedness and reticence, of honesty and decorum and his modesty, vigor and reasonableness placed him squarely within the often-decried Genteel Tradition of polite critics." - Myron Simon
  
  “Perry faithfully discharged what he understood to be the critic’s role as custodian of the moral standards to which society in its own interests holds the artist accountable. However, he also demonstrated the critical capacity to perceive in the artist’s personal vision his justification for experiment and innovation.” - Myron Simon

Interests

• Fly fishing

• Writers

  Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Connections

In 1888, Perry married Annie L. Bliss. They had three children: Constance Goodnough, Margaret Smedley and Arthur Bliss.

Father:

Arthur Latham Perry

Mother:

Mary (Smedley) Perry

Spouse:

Annie L. Bliss

Son:

Arthur Bliss Perry

Daughter:

Margaret Smedley Perry

Daughter:

Constance Goodnough

Brother:

Perry Lewis

January 3, 1877 – January 27, 1970

Lewis Perry was an American educator and the eighth principal of Phillips Exeter Academy.

colleague:

James Henry

15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916

Henry James was an American-British author regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language.

colleague:

Booker T. Washington

c. 1856 – November 14, 1915

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States.

colleague:

Charles Norton

November 16, 1827 – October 21, 1908

Charles Eliot Norton was an American author, social critic, and professor of art.

colleague:

Edith Wharton

January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937

Edith Wharton (born Edith Newbold Jones) was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, and designer.

colleague:

Sarah Orne Jewett

September 3, 1849 – June 24, 1909

Sarah Orne Jewett was an American novelist, short story writer and poet, best known for her local color works set along or near the southern seacoast of Maine.

colleague:

James Williams

January 11, 1842 – August 27, 1910

William James was an American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.

colleague:

Woodrow Wilson

December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was an American statesman, lawyer, and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921.

colleague:

Havelock Ellis

2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939

Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis, was an English physician, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality.

colleague:

Jack London

January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916

John Griffith London (born John Griffith Chaney) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist.

References

• American Literary Critics and Scholars, 1880-1900 Among the literary critics and scholars featured in this volume are James Lane Allen, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, Frank Norris and George Santayana.
  1988
• The Saturday Club - 1920 to 1956
  1958