English Culture in Virginia; a Study of the Gilmer Letters and an Account of the English Professors Obtained by Jefferson for the University of Virginia
William Peterfield Trent was an American editor, and a historian. He also was a professor of English literature at Columbia University from 1900 to 1929.
Background
William Peterfield Trent was born on 10 November 1862 in Richmond, Virginia. He was the second of two children (both boys) of Peterfield Trent, a Richmond physician, and Lucy Carter (Burwell) Trent.
His older brother died in infancy. Both his parents came from distinguished Virginia families. The Civil War left Dr. Trent broken in health and fortune; after serving both his state and the Confederacy as a surgeon, sacrificing his private practice and much of his means to bolster the Lost Cause, he died in 1875.
Education
Young William attended private schools, receiving his secondary education at Norwood's University School, Richmond, where by distinguished academic grades he won exemption from paying tuition after his first term. Going on to the University of Virginia, he received a Bachelor of Letters degree in 1883 and a Master of Arts in 1884, having excelled in classwork and having edited the student magazine, writing much literary criticism and verse.
In 1887, having decided instead to enter teaching, he enrolled for a year of postgraduate study in history and political science at the Johns Hopkins University. His instructors included Herbert B. Adams, J. Franklin Jameson, Richard T. Ely, and the young Woodrow Wilson, but he was most deeply influenced by Adams. At the conclusion of this year, in 1888, Trent joined the faculty of the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. At Sewanee, Trent moved gradually from history toward literature.
Trent had planned a career in the law, and for three years after 1884 he read law and taught in private schools in Richmond.
During his twelve years at Sewanee: The University of the South he was professor of the English language and literature and acting professor of political economy and history, as well as academic dean after 1894. For seven years he also edited the Sewanee Review, which he led in founding in 1892.
In 1900, on the recommendations of Roosevelt, Matthews, and Nicholas Murray Butler, President Seth Low of Columbia University offered Trent a professorship of English literature at Barnard College. Feeling that his usefulness as a leader of southern liberal thought was over, he accepted, thus beginning a long career at Columbia. From the start a large part of Trent's teaching was at the graduate level. In 1925, he served as editor-in-chief at The Works of John Milton until ill health caused him to resign.
In addition, Trent devoted two decades of research to a monumental work on Defoe; his 3, 000-page manuscript, not ready for publication at his death, was at his request deposited at Yale. His other books while at Columbia, besides many editions of literary works, included A History of American Literature, 1607-1865 (1903); Greatness in Literature and Other Papers (1905); Southern Writers (1905), a carefully edited selection; Longfellow and Other Essays (1910); and Great American Writers (with John Erskine, 1912).
A paralytic stroke in Paris in the summer of 1927 ended his teaching duties and left him confined to an invalid's chair.
Achievements
William P. Trent is best known for his moral guides to literature, in which he championed “pure-minded, clean-hearted” morals, the South, and literature as a means of understanding both. Trent’s steadfast belief in the moral potency of literature made him a zealous teacher, as well; in fact, much of his legacy depends on his pedagogical pamphlets. Trent’s strong opinions often annoyed other academics, but through his editorial and critical work he still managed to shape a generation’s moral perspective.
Always a prodigious worker, while at Sewanee Trent edited eleven texts, wrote sixty-five magazine articles (many of them for the Review), and published eight books reflecting the variety of his interests: English Culture in Virginia, an historical study (1889); The Authority of Criticism, and Other Essays (1899); a volume of Verses (1899); Southern Statesmen of the Old Régime (1897); and four biographies: William Gilmore Simms (1892), Benjamin Franklin (1897), Robert E. Lee (1899), and John Milton (1899).
At Columbia, as at Sewanee, he was one of the pioneers in teaching the appreciation of literature for its own sake, subordinating the study of philology, of literary history, and even of criticism to this goal. One of his major projects at Columbia was The Cambridge History of American Literature, edited in collaboration with his Columbia associates Carl Van Doren and John Erskine and with Stuart P. Sherman, to which he contributed a number of chapters. Another was the great Columbia edition of The Works of John Milton.
Throughout his life, Trent remained critical of the Southern politics and passionately attached to Southern literature. Thus, in Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime, he called himself “an American who is at the same time a Southerner, proud enough of his section to admit its faults, and yet to proclaim its essential greatness.”
Always outspoken in his adherence to the truth as he saw it, Trent had protested against imperialism and war at the time of the Spanish-American conflict. His dislike of British imperialism caused him to oppose American entry into World War I and even to publish, in 1915, a poem of sympathy for Germany. His stand alienated many Columbia friends, and the strain of the war years took its toll, though wartime feelings were for the most part quickly forgotten with the coming of peace.
Views
Trent’s interest in Southern literature was buttressed by his knowledge of other disciplines; through his various degrees at the University of Virginia, New York University, and Johns Hopkins University, Trent accrued expertise in history, political science, and law. But when he began teaching at the University of the South, he focused on literature as the most potent means of instilling moral strength in his students. Nonetheless, Trent’s first book on literature, William Gilmore Simms, reflects his acquaintance with numerous fields of study. In it, he argues that “the work of Simms, for extent and contemporary importance, is far more worthy of attention than all of Melville’s writing, with the one exception of Moby Dick; and the character of Simms was most engaging.” In order to prove this thesis, Trent marshals a host of historical materials with a few tagalong literary insights.
Trent insists that the war was fought over Slavery (not States’ Rights) and that the Southern man keeping slaves strove to resist the course of development his country was taking, and was crushed in the attempt. The political-historical argument of this ostensibly literary book irritated many of Trent’s colleagues at the University of the South.
Personality
A lover of poetry, particularly of the ancient classics, Trent read heroic couplets in the grand style, with a deep, declaiming voice. A man of penetrating intelligence, he frowned deeply upon sham, dishonesty, narrow points of view, conclusions hastily arrived at. Yet he was courteous and sympathetic.
Trent’s literary and historical studies offered many students and teachers a way to think about the study of literature; he taught them that literature can be moral instruction of a particularly potent kind, and insisted that through the study of literature one could become a better person. His sincere, lifelong efforts to teach others suggest that, in his case, it worked.
Physical Characteristics:
Trent was a five feet ten in height, with blue eyes, broad forehead, Roman nose, reddish hair and beard, graying in later life.
Quotes from others about the person
Trent had the air of his aristocratic Virginia forebears, "with a twinkle in his eyes when he spoke that went queerly with his dignified bearing," one student thought.
Connections
In 1896 William P. Trent married Alice Lyman. They had two children, Lucia Trent and William P. Trent Jr.
Father:
Peterfield Trent
Peterfield Trent was a Richmond physician.
Mother:
Lucy Carter (Burwell) Trent
Spouse:
Alice Lyman
child:
William Peterfield, Jr.
child:
Lucia Peterfield
mentor:
Herbert Baxter Adams
April 16, 1850 – July 30, 1901
Herbert Baxter Adams was an American educator and historian.
mentor:
J. Franklin Jameson
September 19, 1859 – September 28, 1937
John Franklin Jameson was an American historian, author, and journal editor who played a major role in the professional activities of American historians in the early 20th century. He helped establish the American Historical Association.
mentor:
Richard T. Ely
April 13, 1854 – October 4, 1943
Richard Theodore Ely was an American economist, author, and leader of the Progressive movement who called for more government intervention in order to reform what they perceived as the injustices of capitalism, especially regarding factory conditions, compulsory education, child labor, and labor unions.
mentor:
Woodrow Wilson
December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was an American statesman, lawyer, and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921.
