Horace Howard Furness

Background

He was born in Philadelphia, the second of the four children of Horace Howard and Helen Kate (Rogers) Furness. Like his father he spent almost his entire life in his birthplace.

Education

Upon his graduation from Harvard College in 1888, he returned home, attended courses in music and astronomy for three years at the University of Pennsylvania, and on May 3, 1890, married Louise Brooks Winsor, daughter of William Davis Winsor of Philadelphia, who died without issue May 1, 1929.

In 1891 he became an instructor in physics in the Episcopal Academy and in 1900 published a laboratory manual that was used in several near-by schools.

Career

In 1901 he gave up teaching to join his father as co-editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare. After his apprentice work, a revised edition (1903) of Macbeth, in which, in conformity with the later plan of the series, he reprinted the Folio text literatim, he devoted himself to the historical plays, issuing Richard III (1908), Julius Cesar (1913), King John (1919), and Coriolanus (1928). In 1920 he published a one-act play, The Gloss of Youth, dealing with a fancied episode in the lives of Shakespeare, Milton, and Cromwell.

He died of pneumonia in his sixty-sixth year. To the University of Pennsylvania he bequeathed the great Shakespearian library and collection of relics that had descended to him from his father, together with a $100, 000 endowment for its maintenance.

When he began work on the New Variorum, Furness was unknown as a scholar, and the news of the arrangement was received with some misgiving. At his father's death the suggestion came simultaneously from various quarters that the completion of the edition be intrusted to a committee of scholars.

Though the plan had advantages, it was hardly possible for Furness to assent to it, and he carried on the work, as an act of filial piety, with noble purpose and laborious industry.

In general, the volumes that he edited were well received, but the most careful reviews of his work revealed numerous errors and shortcomings. (See especially S. A. Tannenbaum in the Dial, July 16, 1913, and Lawrence Mason in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, July 1919, pp. 346-59. )

How far they affect the total value of his work is a matter in dispute, but it is clear that in learning, critical judgment, originality, and mastery of detail he was not the equal of his father.

It was his good fortune to be the son and pupil of the greatest of Shakespeare's editors, his misfortune that he must stand comparison with him.

Achievements

• He was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, a member of several clubs and learned societies, and president of the Philadelphia Theatre Association.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Fratricide Punished, or Prince Hamlet of Denmark

    (The German drama "Fratricide Punished" is among the most ...)

Personality

He was a man of great modesty and of many amiable qualities.

Connections

In 1901 he gave up teaching to join his father as co-editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare.

married:

Louise

Daughter:

Louise