Background

Edward Page Mitchell was born on March 24, 1852, in Bath, Maine. He was the son of Edward H. and his wife Frances A. Page Mitchell. His background was the New England of theologians, soldiers, teachers, sailors, merchants, farmers; his boyhood environment that of the rigid Sabbatarians of the time tempered by the sympathetic understanding of a father intellectually curious and naturally enterprising.

Education

Eight years after his birth, the family moved from Bath to New York City, where Mitchell attended Grammar School 35 and George W. Clarke's Mount Washington Collegiate Institute. His earliest published writings were a series of letters descriptive of Southern life written at fourteen to the Bath (Maine) Times from the Gen. Bryan Grimes plantation on the Tar River, North Carolina, which his father leased in an unsuccessful cotton speculation. They reveal acute comprehension and unexpected power of observation; yet their author had no intention of making a literary career when, a conditioned sub-freshman, he entered Bowdoin College with the class of 1871. His purpose was to practice medicine. As a student, he excelled in the humanities; he was the author of the college song "Phi Chi, " still sung by all Bowdoin men; he taught school in the long vacation; he was suspended for participation in a hazing. But he was graduated A. B. and later became an Overseer of the college. It was the necessity of earning money to pay for his education in medicine that took Mitchell to Edward Stanwood, assistant editor of the Boston Advertiser, from whom in 1871, he obtained work as a reporter.

Career

Mitchell's career in Boston was cut short by an impairment of his sight, but he was with the Advertiser long enough to cover fires and horse races, to meet, among others, Edward Everett Hale, John Fiske, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Boyle O'Reilly, and others of equal flavor, to get the smell of ink, and newspaper life engulfed him. He retired to Bath for treatment of his eyes, and there in the course of his recovery he wrote, when just past twenty, an imaginative tale, "The Tachypomp, " in pseudo-scientific style. The story was published in Scribner's Monthly (March 1874) and it stood the test of time so well that forty years later (May 1913) the Century republished it as one of the "specimens of the characteristic fiction read by an earlier generation. " Mitchell might have become an eminent fiction writer, but journalism claimed him, and when, in 1873, the Dingley brothers offered him, on probation, a place on their Lewiston, Maine, Journal, he accepted fifteen dollars a week and with skill and pleasure performed the arduous and multifarious tasks of a country newspaper man. Among his duties were those of exchange editor, and in this capacity, he first became acquainted with the New York Sun. In 1874, his wage was increased to twenty dollars a week when he married AnnieSewall Welch; twenty-five dollars was later refused him. But his success in fiction emboldened him to submit manuscripts to the Sun, and Charles Anderson Dana recognized his talent. Thus on October 1, 1875, at the latter's invitation, Mitchell joined the staff of the paper to work directly under Dana. From that day until his death, he lived for the Sun, and from the beginning of his service until the end he possessed the unquestioning confidence of the paper's successive proprietors. Men he appraised for himself; in the detection of shams and pretenders he was uncanny, and he was as tolerant of amiable weakness as he was relentless in the exposure of evil design. Newspaper purpose and policy never swerved his mind from the search for fact: in the Sun's campaign against the Whiskey Ring the zeal which sought every incriminating circumstance was as energetically employed to detect and expose the false accuser; the pen that defined the attempt of Cleveland to reëstablish the monarchy in Hawaii as "this policy of infamy" was inked to praise unreservedly that Executive when he used the army to protect the mails in the railroad strikes of 1894 and when in the Venezuela crisis of 1895, he asserted the Monroe Doctrine.

In the final and successful effort to make possible the Panama Canal, his contribution to the contest drew forth from Philippe Bunau-Varilla, in his capacity of minister plenipotentiary from the Republic of Panama, a telegram reading. In the campaign to prevent the entrance of the United States into the League of Nations, Mitchell again demonstrated his skill in argumentation. His historical knowledge, his fertility of resource, his appraisal of public opinion, all were exercised with tremendous energy, and, in his opinion, the outcome of that struggle was a supreme victory for American institutions and independence. It was his last great battle and was fought by a man convinced of the justice of his cause. From an ill-defined but authoritative official status perhaps best described as that of chief editorial writer, Mitchell became editor of the Sun on July 20, 1903, under the ownership of William M. Laffan. On Laffan's death, November 19, 1909, at the latter's wish, he assumed the office of president of The Sun Printing and Publishing Association to hold it until the property was sold. When William C. Reick became owner and president, December 17, 1911, Mitchell again gave all his time to the editorship. He was continued in this by Frank Munsey when Munsey became proprietor, June 30, 1916, and held that post under the Munsey management until 1920 when, to conserve his health, he sought less arduous duties, and by vote of the stockholders on motion of Munsey, was retained for life as a permanent member of the staff. On the death of Munsey, December 22, 1925, his successor, William T. Dewart, induced Mitchell to accept a directorship of the Sun and the Evening Telegram, and his counsel and pen were thereafter used as occasion suggested in the product of the newspapers until his death; he was in consultation with his associates within a few days of his passing. Professional tribute to his place in journalism was paid at an Amen Corner dinner in New York City given in his honor, January 7, 1922, at which several hundred newspaper editors from all parts of the United States were present. The family home was in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, a residential borough Mitchell did much to establish. His death occurred in the Mohican Hotel, New London, Connecticut, and his body was interred in the family plot in Glen Ridge, January 25, 1927.

Achievements

• Mitchell was recognized as a major figure in the early development of the science fiction genre.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Edward Page Mitchell - Sci-Fi and Fantasy Stories From 'The Sun'

    (Later described as "the lost giant of American science fi...)

  • The Tachypomp

    (Later described as ""the lost giant of American science f...)

  • El espectroscopio del alma (Spanish Edition)

    (Edward Page Mitchell (1852-1927) fue editor del diario ne...)

  • The Devilish Rat: (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures)

    (This early work by Edward Page Mitchell was originally pu...)

  • THE CRYSTAL MAN - Edward Page Mitchell: Raven Classics

    (Science Fiction and Supernatural Horror Fantasy Tales fro...)

  • book

  • The Crystal Man: Landmark Science Fiction

Religion

Mitchell was a member of no church.

Politics

Mitchell was independent in politics.

Personality

Mitchell inherited a sturdy frame, tall stature, natural dignity of bearing; his mind was equipped for the most serious and the most whimsical exercises. For fifty-two years, in the anonymity of the newspaper, Mitchell used his well-stored mind, his genius for wit, his capacity for exposition, and his faculty for denunciation for the sustenance of policies he believed would best serve the interests of America, for the exposure of men and schemes he held to be fraudulent, and for the amusement of the readers of the newspaper.

Connections

On July 22, 1912, Mitchell married Ada M. Burroughs, of Brooklyn, by whom he had one son, Burroughs. After his second marriage, he made his home at Watchapey Farm, Charlestown, Rhode Island, where his property included part of the battlefield on which his ancestors fought King Philip. Annie Sewall Welch Mitchell died December 13, 1909, having borne four sons.

Father:

Edward H. Mitchell

Mother:

Frances A. Page Mitchell

Wife:

Annie Sewall Welch Mitchell

Wife:

Ada M. Burroughs