Edward Sandford Martin

Background

Edward Sandford Martin was born on 2 January 1856 at "Willowbrook, " the family home on Owasco Lake near Auburn, New York. He was the tenth of eleven children (seven daughters, four sons) of Enos Thompson Throop Martin, an attorney with a literary bent, and Cornelia (Williams) Martin. He was a grandnephew of Gov. Enos Thompson Throop of New York. Both parents were York Staters of old Connecticut stock and well-to-do by inheritance.

Education

After private tutoring, he attended Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachussets, and entered Harvard College with the class of 1877. A. Lawrence Lowell, also of this class, said later of the modest, gentle boy that he was its best-loved member. With several others, Martin founded in 1876 the Harvard Lampoon, an undergraduate humor magazine.

Career

Poor health and hearing frustrated his attempts to find a career after graduation. He was successively a State Department clerk, a New York Sun staff member (Charles A. Dana having a liking for his verse), and a paper-mill employee in New Hampshire and Maine, studying law and writing poetry between times. His Slye Ballades in Harvard China appeared in 1882, and later in the same year a mutual friend induced John Ames Mitchell, then projecting a humor magazine, to invite him to New York to edit it. With the Lampoon as his model, Martin saw Life through its first six months himself writing, said Mitchell, as much as was contributed by others. Malaria compelled his withdrawal in June 1883, when he removed to Rochester, N. Y. , and studied law during convalescence, Admitted to the bar in 1884, he practised only briefly before joining the Rochester Union & Advertiser as associate editor, a post he held, restively, for seven years. In 1887 Martin began doing the editorial page for Life, at first from Rochester. Weekly for the next forty-one years, his urbane comment on current political and social topics gave that journal a sustained note of serious purpose. The generally reflective mood of these pieces was interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1914, when Martin sided strongly with the Entente. Col. Edward M. House, who counted him a friend "from whom I keep nothing, " remarked to President Wilson that Martin "had as much good sense as any one I knew". Martin left the Rochester paper in 1892 to devote full time to magazine work, for by then, in addition to his Life work, he was writing "The Point of View" for Scribner's Magazine and contributing poetry, short stories, and articles on a broad range of topics to other periodicals. He initiated, in 1893, a page of comment in Harper's Weekly, "This Busy World, " which he wrote until the paper was sold in 1913. In 1896 he moved permanently to New York City. Light verse was his forte in youth, thanks to a faculty, well illustrated in A Little Brother of the Rich and Other Verses (1890), for turning a pleasing rhyme to unexpected advantage. But a philosophical turn of mind and an acute inner ear for colloquial English made him most at home in the informal essay. From 1920 to 1935 he occupied "The Editor's Easy Chair" in Harper's Monthly, in succession to George William Curtis and William Dean Howells. He died in New York City at the age of eighty-three and was buried near his summer home of thirty years at Wilton, Connecticut.

Achievements

• Edward Sandford Martin is known as the founder of "The Harvard Lampoon" and co-founder and first editor of the original "Life" magazine, a position he held for 45 years, Martin was also a regular contributor to "Harper's Monthly" from 1920 to 1935, and the author of several volumes of essays.

Works

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  • The war week by week as seen from New York;

    (This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)

  • The Life of Joseph Hodges Choate As Gathered Chiefly from His Letters, Volume 2

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • A Father to His Freshman Son: A Father to His Graduate Girl (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Father to His Freshman Son: A Father to Hi...)

  • Cousin Anthony and I

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Lucid Intervals

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • In a New Century (Classic Reprint)

    (The fortunate people the truly fortunate are not so much ...)

  • Atlantic Readings, Number 5. A Father to His Freshman Son; A Father to His Graduate Girl, pp. 45-69

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • In a New Century, pp. 1-375

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  • The Luxury of Children & Some Other Luxuries. Illustrated by Sarah S. Stilwell

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • The courtship of a careful man, and a few other courtships

    (Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this clas...)

  • In a New Century

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • The Diary of a Nation: The War and How We Got Into It

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Abroad with Jane

    (Trieste Publishing has a massive catalogue of classic boo...)

  • A Little Brother of the Rich: And Other Verses 1890

    (Originally published in 1890. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • Poems: -1914

    (Originally published in 1914. This volume from the Cornel...)

Views

Quotations: “Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow. ”

Personality

From childhood Martin was afflicted with otosclerosis, and progressive deafness haunted all his remaining years. Tolerant, optimistic, an internationalist both in politics and in culture, and deeply convinced of the existence of God and the need of Him, he was wont to think of himself as a lay preacher, though his mind was too subtle and his spirit too blithe to make this characterization altogether meet. Of money matters Martin was almost disastrously neglectful; his wife's admonitions and a residuary bequest in Mitchell's will saved him. He was much interested, from about the time of his wife's death in May 1918 until his own, in the claims of spiritualism a penchant doubtless attributable in part to the loneliness of deafness.

Connections

On September 2, 1886 he married Julia Whitney of Rochester, they had three children, George Whitney, Mary, and Lois Whitney.

Father:

Enos Thompson Throop Martin

25 November 1808 - 19 September 1883

Mother:

Cornelia Williams Martin

25 December 1818 - 9 July 1899

Brother:

John W. Martin

24 September 1850 - 21 November 1903

Brother:

Enos Throop Martin

23 December 1844 - 23 May 1885

Brother:

George Bliss Martin

29 May 1852 - 2 November 1928

Brother:

Capt John Williams “Jack” Martin

24 September 1850 - 22 November 1908

Sister:

Eveline Throop Martin Alexander

28 February 1843 - 31 July 1922

Sister:

Emily Norwood Martin Upton

29 November 1846 - 29 March 1870

Sister:

Mary Williams Martin

5 May 1838 - 26 January 1884

Sister:

Harriet Byron Martin

1841 - 1845

Sister:

Eliza Williams Martin Tremain

1848 - February 1909

Sister:

Cornelia Eliza Martin

10 February 1840 - 14 January 1927

Sister:

Violet Blair Martin Wilder

24 February 1860 - 25 August 1919

Wife:

Julia Whitney Martin

28 October 1859 - 14 May 1918

Daughter:

Mary M. Martin Degener

26 December 1888 - 25 Junuary 1987

Daughter:

Lois Whitney

Son:

George Whitney Martin

17 December 1887 - 5 January 1959