Background

Ernest Penney Earnest was born on September 19, 1901, in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, United States.

Education

Earnest obtained his bachelor’s degree in 1923 from Lafayette College, his master's degree in 1927 and a doctor's degree in 1936 from Princeton University.

Career

Earnest began his career as an instructor in English at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1924. He moved to Temple University in 1927, eventually becoming a professor of English in 1947. He retired from that institution in 1969. He also held the position of director of the Havertown Unit from 1946 to 1951. Earnest served as a volunteer fireman, starting in 1944 in Gladwyne and Cape May Point, New Jersey, and was the director of the Gladwyne Fire Company starting in 1962.

In the course of his career Earnest wrote nine books, including John and William Bartram (1940); A Foreword to Literature (1944); S. Weir Mitchell: Novelist and Physician (1950); Academic Procession: An Informal History of the American College, 1636-1953 (1953); The Uses of Prose (1956); Expatriates and Patriots: American Artists, Scholars, And Writers Abroad, 1789-1930 (1968); The Single Vision: The Alienation of American Intellectuals, 1915-1930 (1970); The American Eve in Fact and Fiction, 1775-1914 (1975); and his last book, The Volunteer Fire Company: Past and Present (1979).

He also contributed numerous articles to Atlantic, Saturday Review of Literature, American Scholar, and other Periodicals.

Achievements

• Earnest received the Philadelphia Athenaeum Award in 1968 for the volume Expatriates and Patriots.
  
  

Works

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• book

  • Academic Procession

    (An Informal History of the American College (1636-1953))

    1953
  • The Single Vision

    (The Alienation of American Intellectuals, 1915-1930)

    1970
  • Expatriates and patriots

    (American artists, scholars, and writers in Europe)

    1968
  • The American Eve in Fact and Fiction, 1775-1914 1975
  • The uses of prose 1956
  • S. Weir Mitchell Novelist and Physician 1950