Log In

Raymond Macdonald Alden Edit Profile

educator philologist

Raymond Macdonald Alden was an American philologist and educator. He served as an associate professor of English literature and rhetoric at Stanford University, and later became chairman of English at the University of Illinois.

Background

Raymond Macdonald Alden was born on March 30, 1873 at New Hartford, New York, United States. He was the son of Gustavus R. and Isabella (Macdonald) Alden. His father was a Presbyterian minister; his mother was known to an army of Sunday-school scholars, with outposts in Armenia and Japan, as "Pansy, " the author, ultimately, of about seventy-five volumes of juvenile fiction persuasively written to make "observance of the Golden Rule a pleasure. " Over her son's education and literary taste she exercised a guiding influence, to which other influences were added later.

Education

Alden studied for a time at Rollins College at Winter Park, Florida, attended Columbian (now George Washington) University 1892-1893, and for his last year went to the University of Pennsylvania. Apparently unhampered by these changes, he took active part in student affairs, made the winning speech in a Cornell-Pennsylvania debate, and graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1894. He then took his Master of Arts degree at Harvard in 1896 and his Ph. D. at Pennsylvania in 1898 with a dissertation on The Rise of Formal Satire in England under Classical Influence (1899), and stayed on as fellow in English 1898-1899.

Career

Alden taught for a year at Columbian University and was assistant in English at Harvard in 1896-1897, and stayed as instructor at Pennsylvania in 1899-1901. He then went to Leland Stanford Jr. University as assistant professor. He was made associate professor in 1909, went to the University of Illinois as full professor in 1911, but returned to Stanford with full rank in 1914. He taught in summer sessions at Chicago in 1910, at Harvard in 1912, and at Columbia in 1916 and 1919.

As a prosodist and as a Shakespearean he had, at least in America, no indisputable superiors. The peculiar quality of his scholarship was its entire freedom from crotchets, from strained hypotheses, and from glimmering intuitions doing duty as ascertained facts. He was eminently successful as the author of handbooks such as English Verse (1903), An Introduction to Poetry (1909), Alfred Tennyson--How to Know Him (1917), and Shakespeare (1922), and as the editor of Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle and A King and No King (both in one volume, 1910), and of the Sonnets in the Tudor Shakespeare (1913). His full powers show best perhaps in his variorum edition of The Sonnets of Shakespeare (1916), a masterly performance, and in various shorter articles and reviews (e. g. , "The Punctuation of Shakespeare's Printers") in which whole batteries of fact and argument are deployed in order to demolish the structures of less cautious scholars.

His diligence as a scholar and editor of text-books did not lead him to slight his work in classroom and seminar; he was an energetic and stimulating teacher. He also wrote verse and was the author of several children's books.

In 1924, while absent on sabbatical leave from Stanford, he was visiting professor at Swarthmore College and at Columbia University. A disease of the nerves, long held in abeyance, at this time took an acute turn, but he persisted with his work until April, and in September after months of suffering bravely endured he died in Philadelphia.

Achievements

  • Alden was a recognized authority on Shakespeare, Tennyson and Thoreau, and authored many books on the English language and educational methods. He also contributed to verse, short stories, educational journals and many publications. In 1905 he was a prize winner in a short-story contest ($1, 000 prize).

Works

All works

Personality

Alden was a man of unusual urbanity and charm. He was liked by most, and by those who could appreciate the range and accuracy of his knowledge, the lucidity and balance of his thinking, he was admired.

Connections

On May 24, 1904, Alden married Barbara G. Hitt of Alhambra, California. They had five children.

Father:
Gustavus R. Alden

Mother:
Isabella (Macdonald) Alden

Spouse:
Barbara G. (Hitt) Alden

Son :
Roland Herrick Alden