The Story of the West Series. Edited by Ripley Hitchcock.
(Title: The Story of the West Series. Edited by Ripley Hit...)
Title: The Story of the West Series. Edited by Ripley Hitchcock.
Publisher: British Library, Historical Print Editions
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British Library
Hitchcock, James Ripley Wellman;
1895- .
8º.
10408.de.
James Ripley Wellman Hitchcock was an American editor, journalist and art critic. He worked at the New York Tribune, D. Appleton & Company, Harper & Brothers, and edited the works of Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Zane Grey, Joel Chandler Harris, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.
Background
James Ripley Wellman Hitchcock was born on July 3, 1857 in Fitchburg, Massachussets, United States. He was a descendant of Luke Hitchcock of New Haven and Wethersfield, Connecticut, and the son of Doctor Alfred and Aurilla Phebe (Wellman) Hitchcock.
Education
Hitchcock graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard in 1877, and spent another year there in the study of art and philosophy.
Career
Hitchcock went to New York for a year's work in medicine and surgery, thinking to give his father's profession a trial. His taste did not run in that direction, however, and he began writing volunteer articles for newspapers and magazines, achieving such success that in 1882 he joined the staff of the New York Tribune as art critic. He filled this place with distinction for eight years, during which time he also made extended tours through the Northwest and in New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Mexico as staff correspondent of the Tribune. His letters were signed J. R. W. H. and were very nearly the last of his writings to bear his full name. Finding it too cumbersome, he dropped part of it, and was known thereafter only as Ripley Hitchcock.
During this middle period of his life he lived for a number of years at Nutley, New Jersey, and was conspicuous among those who made that place a noteworthy center of literature and art. At one time he organized a historical pageant at Nutley--one of the first affairs of the kind in the United States--which comprised among other things jousting with lances by knights in armor.
In 1890 he left the Tribune to become literary adviser for the publishing house of D. Appleton & Company, and there served for twelve years, during which time he was instrumental in introducing the writings of Rudyard Kipling to the American public. In 1906 he became literary adviser and director for Harper & Brothers, then undergoing reorganization, and had much to do with restoring that company to its former high degree of prosperity. He held this place until his death. Meanwhile he did much lecturing on literary and artistic subjects, took a large part in various reform movements in New York City, and wrote and edited many books. His works on art include Etching in America (1886); Notable Etchings by American Artists (1886); Madonnas by Old Masters (1888); Some American Painters in Water Colors (1890). In entirely different vein he wrote Thomas De Quincey, a Study (1899), also published as the introduction to an edition of Confessions of an English Opium Eater; The Louisiana Purchase and the Exploration, Early History and Building of the West (1903); and The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1905), the last two coinciding somewhat closely with the great expositions held in celebration of the anniversaries of those events.
He edited and wrote descriptive matter for several volumes of art reproductions, the most noteworthy being The Art of the World, Illustrated in the Paintings, Statuary and Architecture of the World's Columbian Exposition (1894). In the course of his editorial career he prepared for the press The Life of an Artist (1890), by Jules Breton; The Last Words of Thomas Carlyle (1892); The Story of the West series (1895-1902), comprising The Story of the Indian, The Story of the Mine, The Story of the Cowboy, The Story of the Railroad, The Story of the Soldier, and The Story of the Trapper, each with an introduction by the editor; Recollections, Personal and Literary (1903), by Richard Henry Stoddard; The Trail-Makers; a Library of History and Exploration (1904-1905); Decisive Battles of America (1909), by Albert Bushnell Hart, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and others; and the monumental Documentary Edition (1918) of Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People. At a dinner given by his father-in-law, Charles Sargent, to a visiting party of French soldiers on May 4, 1918, Hitchcock was stricken by heart failure and died within a few minutes.
(Title: The Story of the West Series. Edited by Ripley Hit...)
Personality
Hitchcock was a man of compelling charm, both in his personal manner and in his writings, and had always a circle of friends and co-workers about him.
Connections
Hitchcock was married twice: in 1883, to Martha Wolcott Hall of Springfield, Massachussets, who died in 1903; and in 1914 to Helen Sargeant of New York, herself a prominent educator and artworker, who survived him.