Henry Taylor Parker

Background

Henry Taylor Parker was born on April 29, 1867 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of William Fisk and Susan Sophia (Taylor) Parker.

Education

Henry Taylor Parker attended the Boston public schools, graduating from the English High School in 1883. Prepared for college by a tutor, he entered Harvard in 1886, where he remained until 1889 but did not graduate.

Career

Henry Taylor Parker joined with George Santayana, Robert Herrick, and George Pierce Baker in the founding of the Harvard Monthly and he was also one of the authors of the libretto of a Hasty Pudding Club show. After leaving Harvard, he sailed for Europe and pursued his studies for some two years in England and on the Continent. Returning home, he began almost immediately the long professional career in journalism that continued uninterruptedly until within a week of his death. From 1892 to 1898 and again from 1901 to 1903 he was New York correspondent for the Boston Evening Transcript, from 1898 to 1900, London correspondent for the Transcript and the New York Commercial Advertiser, from 1903 to 1905 he was with the New York Globe, first as dramatic critic and later as dramatic and music critic. On September 1905, the management of the Transcript summoned him to Boston to replace a substitute and thereafter he was identified with that paper solely.

Henry Taylor Parker was the music and drama editor for almost thirty years and did not hesitate to be original or to insist upon having his own way. His first change was to review the Friday afternoon rehearsal of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (a rehearsal only in name) on Saturday instead of waiting until the appearance of Monday evening's paper, as had been the custom of his predecessors. Instead of following the custom of other editors, he would not use publicity matter from the press agents of the theatres and concert halls but would rewrite their articles in his own form, thus making his department the expression of his style and ideas. The Transcript became notable among Boston newspapers for such care and originality in dealing with the arts. The quality and quantity of his work, both editing and writing, was extraordinary. He was one of the few American journalists who could do both.

Henry Taylor Parker did not know the meaning of the words "labor-saving devices", but would write in his crabbed hand his many hundred thousand words of apt description and incisive criticism. More than one attempt to supply him with a typewriting machine or a stenographer failed. A long time was required to persuade him to suffer the presence and aid of an editorial assistant. The proofroom furnished him with a reader who qualified as an expert in the mysteries of his handwriting, but he would be found every afternoon in the composition room bending over his final proofs and dangling between his lips the inevitable cigarette, which in his latter years was sometimes replaced by a pipe. From late Friday evening until after midnight he was busily engaged in putting together his Saturday pages, being given the assistance of a special make-up man at overtime wages, a privilege granted to no other editor. It is significant that he was replaced by two men, one for the drama and one for music.

His only published book was Eighth Notes: Voices and Figures of Music and the Dance (1922), largely made up from his writings for the Transcript. His work has been described as "the finest chapter in newspaper drama criticism in America". He reported the play, its setting, and the acting in such detail that the reader had "a complete impression of a news event, " and he knew actors "not in terms of isolated performances but in terms of their careers". His death, occasioned by an attack of pneumonia, occurred when he was in his sixty-seventh year on March 20, 1934. For more than a month the Transcript contained almost daily articles, letters, and pictures which revealed the widespread interest in the man and his work.

Achievements

• Henry Taylor Parker was best known as a music and drama editor for Boston Evening Transcript for almost thirty years.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Eighth Notes: Voices And Figures Of Music And The Dance / By H. T. Parker...

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

Personality

Henry Taylor Parker a small man, his diminutive figure did not reach to more than five feet five inches, he was among the most conspicuous of the more than four hundred members of the Transcript staff. Whether darting about with a springy step from one floor to another, or seated in his cubby-hole down four or five steps from a main passage, he inevitably caught the eye of the passer-by.

Quotes from others about the person

• "This remarkable little man of fine perceptions, with his dark eyes burning quizzically in a head bent forward with a sleuthing thrust and emphatic in its nods, was a giant among critics. " - Henry Taylor Parker's biographer.

Interests

• In addition to his special subjects, music and drama, there were few human interests upon which Henry Taylor Parker did not discourse. These included politics, the pictorial arts, religion, and current world events. He treated them, not merely as journalistic topics to fill a column, but as matters which were of extensive personal interest.

Connections

Henry Taylor Parker was never married.

Father:

William Fisk Parker

Mother:

Susan Sophia (Taylor) Parker

References

• H.T.P. ;: Portrait of a critic,