Background
Cooke, George Willis was born on April 23, 1848 in Comstock, Michigan, United States, the son of Hiram and Susan Jane (Earl) Cooke.
George attended Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan from which he graduated in 1867.
George attended Meadville Theological School, Meadville, Pennysilvania.
(Excerpt from A Bibliography of James Russell Lowell After...)
Excerpt from A Bibliography of James Russell Lowell After a chronological list of Lowell's books, and another of Lowell bibliographies, there is given an alphabetical arrangement of his single titles, including poems, essays, criticisms, speeches, etc. In this list of single titles the place and date of the first appearance of each piece is briefly noted, also the place and date of its book publication.
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editor lecturer author Unitarian minister
Cooke, George Willis was born on April 23, 1848 in Comstock, Michigan, United States, the son of Hiram and Susan Jane (Earl) Cooke.
George attended Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan from which he graduated in 1867. He also attended Liberal Institute in Jefferson, Wisconsin, and Meadville Theological School in Meadville, Pennysilvania.
While at his first parish in Wisconsin, George started publishing the Liberal Worker. Later he helped found and edit another liberal paper in Chicago called Unity. In 1880, Cooke moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where he met Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the founders of transcendentalism. He admired Emerson for having what he believed to be a similarly humanist point of view. He began writing a book about the writer and philosopher which he continued to work on after moving to Lexington where he became a pastor at a local church. His first book, Ralph Waldo Emerson: His Life, Writings, and Philosophy, was published in 1881. It was intended as an impartial study of Emerson's written work, but as Robert E. Burkholder pointed out in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Cooke as a critic dealt almost exclusively with authors with whom he sympathized, with writers in whose works he could recognize divinity."
In 1885, he published the article "Emerson's View of Nationality" in another book about Emerson's work and history. And in 1908, he published a thorough bibliography of the author's work, which is, according to E. L. Cary who reviewed A Bibliography of Ralph Waldo Emerson for the New York Times, "in all respects what an intelligently constructed book of reference should be."
After his first book about Emerson, Cooke expanded his study of transcendentalism. In 1885, he published two articles in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in the Dial, a transcendentalist journal. In them, Cooke explores the origins of the movement in New England, arguing against the idea that its roots came from German idealism. He also discussed the values inherent in the Philosophy and their social connotations. On of the articles, 4The Dial: An Historical and Bibliographical Introduction with a List of the Contributors" was later adapted as the introduction for a reprinting of the journal in 1902. Other transcendentalist topics that Cooke covered include a biography of John Sullivan Dwight published in 1898. His research for John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-Farmer, Editor, and Critic of Music: A Biography led to a project in which he edited and published a group of letters to Dwight from George Curtis. Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis to John S. Dwight: Brook Farm and Concord, published in 1898, revealed details of life in the transcendentalist community.
Cooke's skills as an editor were also seen in the 1903 work The Poets of Transcendentalism: An Anthology. This book contained the work of many of the group's poets, some of whom are no longer commonly known.
While writing about transcendentalism, Cooke also took an interest in other areas of literature. Shortly after publishing his first book on Emerson, Cooke examined the author George Eliot in George Eliot: A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings, and Philosophy (1883). He similarly praised the humanistic elements in her writing including a belief in natural laws and personal spirituality. Poets and Problems, published in 1886, was Cooke's critical look at the poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Ruskin, and Robert Browning. Of the trio, he most admired the work of Browning, placing him on the same level with Emerson and Thomas Carlyle. Cooke continued his review of Browning in A Guide-Book to the Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning, published in 1891, which reprinted his poetry along with Cooke's own comments, and The Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning published in 1899. He also wrote an article for Poet-Love in 1894 entitled "Browning's Interpretation of Romantic Love as Compared with that of Plato, Dante, and Petrarch." The attention Cooke paid to Browning did much for the poet's reputation and increased public interest in his work.
About the time of Cooke published his second book on Browning, he took a break from being a minister. Between 1899 and 1922, he concentrated on writing and worked as a teacher at the Rand School of Social Science in New York, the New England Institute for the Promotion of Learning, and the Boston School of Social Science. During this period, Cooke continued his work on a subject in which he had dabbled previously - religious history. He wrote several histories of parishes with which he had connections, the first being A History of the Clapboard Trees or Third Parish, Dedham, Massachusetts now the Unitarian Parish, West Dedham, 1736-1886, published in 1887. It was followed by Origin and Early History of the First Parish, Sharon, Massachusetts, published in 1903. But his most impressive work of this genre was Unitarianism In America: A History of Its Origin and Development (1902). In addition to chronicling the evolution of this religion in America, the book attempted to show the influence of Unitarianism in multiple facets of life, from government to academia to science.
Cook's last book, The Social Evolution of Religion, was published in 1920. The author describes his belief in the capacity of religion to grow and expand with a changing world. Cooke died suddenly a week later after his marriage.
(Excerpt from A Bibliography of James Russell Lowell After...)
Cooke was a Unitarian minister.
Although Cooke did not consider himself a transcendentalist, he admired the philosophy, which coincided with his own religious and social beliefs as a Unitarian minister.
Cooke had liberal ideas from the beginning of his career. The humanist values that he furthered as a newspaper editor and minister included women's rights, an optimistic view of the progress of science, and a rejection of capitalism, militarism, and imperialism in favor of a more socialist order.
George married Lucy Nash in 1872 with whom he had two children: Florence, Marian. In 1923, a few years after the publication of his last book, Cooke remarried (his first wife having died) Mary Lydia Leggert who was also a Unitarian minister.