Background

Hiram Price Collier was the son of Robert Laird Collier, a distinguished Unitarian clergyman of Maryland stock, and Mary Price. He was born on May 25, 1860 in Davenport, Iowa, United States at the home of his mother’s parents.

Education

Hiram's mother died in 1872 and his father took him to Europe, where he spent five years at school in Geneva and Leipzig and became proficient in French and German. He graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1882.

Career

Collier was for nine years a Unitarian minister at Hingham and elsewhere in Massachusetts. In 1891 he left the ministry to take up writing. For a time after 1891 he was in the West, and his first book, Mr. Picket Pin and His Friends (London, 1894), was an account of the Sioux Indians and reservation life. In 1893 he sailed for England, where he was European editor of the Forum.

Returning to America in 1895 he made his permanent home in Tuxedo Park, New York, and devoted himself to writing and study. A sharply critical volume purporting to be written by a Frenchman, America and the Americans from the French Point of View, was published, at first anonymously, in 1897; A Parish of Two, a story told in letters and written in collaboration with Henry G. McVickar, appeared in 1903. Collier also contributed the chapters on riding to a book on Driving and Riding (1905) for Macmillan’s Sportsman’s Library.

During the Spanish War he was in active service as an ensign in the navy. Afterward he was secretary of the Outing Publishing Company. His book England and the English from an American Point of View, published serially and in book form in 1909, was the first to gain him a wide audience, and suggested the direction of his later writing. His subsequent years were spent largely in travel with Mrs. Collier in Europe, South America, India, China, and Japan. In 1911 appeared The West in the East from an American Point of View, followed in 1913 by Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View.

At the time of his death he had spent the summer with his wife and two daughters in Scandinavian countries, contributing articles to Scribner's. He died suddenly of heart failure while shooting on the estate of Count Wedell in Denmark. Appearing just before the World War, his book on Germany attracted general attention. Though not unfriendly or intentionally unfair, it was, like all his other writing, plain-spoken, incisive, a trifle over-positive.

In his earlier book on England he had declared that “the Germans since 1870 have taken the place of the English as the boors of Europe, ” and he also predicted their defeat in a war against England. Hence there was a furor when he was received with special favor by the Kaiser. He had a faculty for presenting a wealth of information in popular, attractive style, spiced with sharp observation and comment. His zest for fact appears in his own statement that he got more keen enjoyment out of a census report than from a novel. He stated his beliefs vigorously, and some of his characteristic beliefs were in capital punishment, athletics, war, the Kaiser, and the House of Lords. He attacked socialism, and though intensely patriotic, was critical of much in modern American life.

Achievements

• Collier was best known for his clever sketches of national character in America and the Americans from the French Point of View (1896); England and the English from an American Point of View (1909); The West in the East from an American Point of View (1911) and Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View (1913).

Works

More photos

• book

  • A parish of two;

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

  • Picket-Pin and his Friends, etc. A description of the North American Indians and their life.

    (Mark Twain once famously said "there was but one solitary...)

  • America and the Americans from a French Point of View

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

  • England and the English from an American Point of View

    (This book an EXACT reproduction of the original book publ...)

  • The West in the East from an American point of view

    (The West in the East from an American point of view 560 P...)

  • Germany and the Germans from an American point of view

Personality

Collier was of slender but athletic build, five feet eleven inches in height. He played all games well, and loved outdoor life.

Connections

On August 8, 1893, Collier married Katharine D. Robbins.

Father:

Robert Laird Collier

Mother:

Mary Price

Spouse:

Katharine D. Robbins