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Richard Eugene Burton was born at Hartford, Connecticut, the only child of the Rev. Nathaniel Judson Burton and Rachel (Chase) Burton. Both his grandfathers were clergymen. His father, successor to Horace Bushnell at the Park (Congregational) Church of Hartford, was an intimate of men of letters, among them Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner.
Reared in the benevolent climate of New England's literary prestige, Richard Burton belonged to a generation of Hartford citizens many of whom achieved wide reputation. Burton took his bachelor's degree at Trinity College, Hartford, in 1883 and his Ph. D. five years later at Johns Hopkins, where he taught Old English while still a graduate student.
His professional debut was made as managing editor of the Churchman (1888 - 89). His early association with the Hartford group of writers and publishers resulted in his becoming literary editor of the influential Hartford Courant (1890 - 97).
In 1898 Burton accepted an appointment at the University of Minnesota which inaugurated a long connection with education in the Middle West. Until 1902 he was head of the department of English, a post which he resumed in 1906. During the interval he served as editor for the Lothrop Publishing Company and as professorial lecturer on English literature at the University of Chicago.
His second appointment at Minnesota lasted until 1925, when he resigned to devote his attention to writing and to the public lectures on contemporary fiction, poetry, and drama which had already given him a nationwide following. Few Americans have enjoyed a success as great as his in adapting the methods of the "inspirational teacher" to the public platform.
Vitality and enthusiasm were the assets of a style in which large audiences took inexhaustible pleasure. Ever a conspicuous figure in the professional world of the arts, Burton was influential also in the creation and guidance of the Drama League of America, of which he was president, 1914-15.
Burton's publications include eleven volumes of verse, seven of literary criticism, one of fiction, and one a popular treatment of linguistics.
The long span of his creative interest in verse may be accounted for by the character of the work itself.
Burton once suggested that the quality of his work was derived from a constant warfare within him between the Puritan and the man of the world.
A friendly critic might have commented that it was an urbane exchange rather than a warfare. After his resignation from Minnesota, Burton was associated as lecturer with Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, from 1928 to 1931.
In 1933 he became professor of literature at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, where enrollment in his classes strained the capacity of the halls in which he lectured. Before such a class he had just opened his books and notes when he was stricken with the cerebral hemorrhage that ended his life. He died at his home in Winter Park and was buried at Hartford.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Quotes from others about the person
The literary critic Jessie Rittenhouse described it as being distinguished for "buoyancy and lyric joy, " its essential attractions being "tenderness, sympathy and an emphasis on essential things. "
Students found him inspiring, engaging, and a person who valued every moment. “If I were Dr. Burton now, ” one former pupil stated, “I’d probably take out my gold watch— as he so often did towards the end of class— and say, ‘Good! We have three minutes left! I’m going to take every last one of them. ”
Burton was married twice, first in 1889 to Agnes Rose Tingley, earlier divorced from Jonathan Parkhurst, and second, in 1931, to Ruth Guthrie Thomson, widow of John Harding of Paterson, New Jersey. He had no children.
Among his boyhood friends who remained lifelong intimates were the actors Otis Skinner and William Gillette and the popular Yale teacher of English literature William Lyon Phelps.
