Background
Skinner was born in Victor, New New York
Skinner was born in Victor, New New York
His career in literature and journalism included editorship of the Brooklyn Eagle. His study of the paper’s famed Walt Whitman appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1903.
Skinner hoped that America’s progress would transform the nation’s few legends into few but great ones – “as time goes on the figures seen against the morning twilight of our history will rise to more commanding stature.” He hoped to combine folklore conventions with New England transcendentalism to keep alive traditions endangered by the industrial age.