George Ticknor

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George Ticknor

George Ticknor (born August 1, 1791 in Boston , Massachusetts , United States , † January 26, 1871 ) was an American academic who specialized in linguistics and literature . He is particularly known for his work on the history of Spanish literature and literary criticism .

education

George Ticknor received his early school education from his father Elisha (1757-1821), the director of a public school and founder of the Massachusetts Mutual Fire Insurance Company, the system of free elementary schools in Boston and the first savings bank in New England .

From 1805 he attended Dartmouth College , which he graduated in 1807. For the next few years Ticknor studied Latin and Greek with John Sylvester , John Gardiner and Samuel Parr before he began studying law in 1810 . He was admitted to the bar three years later. Ticknor opened a law firm in his hometown, but gave it up after a year and went to Europe in 1815, where he studied at the University of Göttingen for almost two years .

job

On his return he was appointed professor of French and Spanish and the Belles-Lettres at Harvard University in 1817 . After studying in France, Spain and Portugal, he took up teaching in 1819.

During this time he advocated the division of students according to the Progress Guard and regorganized his own chair. In 1821 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1823, Ticknor and a few colleagues began a partially successful attempt to soften Harvard's rigid organization and reform the curriculum. He built up the staff in his modern language department, especially in 1825 with the appointment of Charles Follen as the first teacher of German at Harvard. Top students in Ticknor's department included Francis James Child , James Russell Lowell , John Lothrop Motley , Charles Eliot Norton, and Henry David Thoreau .

In 1835 he gave up the professorship and went to Europe again for three years; his successor at Harvard was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow .

writer

On his return to the United States, he devoted himself to the most important activity in his life, the history and criticism of Spanish literature , where he broke new ground in many ways. In his lectures he built the scheme of his work History of Spanish Literature (New York and London 1849, 3 vol .; 4th ed. 1872), in which he used the results of thirty years of studies.

Ticknor House (left), Park Street, Boston. Photo by Southworth & Hawes, 1858.

This standard work at that time was translated into Spanish by Pascual de Gayangos y Arce from 1851 to 1857 ; the translation into German was done by Nikolaus Heinrich Julius and Ferdinand Wolf (Leipzig. 1867, 2 vols.). Five new editions were published between 1854 and 1888. The third edition from 1863 was expanded and corrected, the fourth from 1872 contained the latest version by the author himself. Ticknor also wrote a biography of Lafayette and the historian Prescott (1863, new edition 1882).

In addition to his academic work, Ticknor was his father's successor as a member of the Primary School Board (1822-1825), was 1823-1832 on the board of the Boston Athenaeum and in 1833 its deputy director and 1827-1835 director and 1841-1862 deputy director of the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company. He was also 1826-1830 on the board of the Massachusetts General Hospital and 1830-1850 the Boston Provident Institution for Savings, which his father had co-founded.

Founding member of the Boston Public Library

In 1852, Ticknor was appointed to a committee aimed at founding the Boston Public Library . With the help of Edward Everett , who was a successful politician at the time and before that President of Harvard University (1846–1849), Ticknor wrote most of the planning reports and was widely circulated. Joshua Bates , a Boston-born banker in London, read a copy and immediately became the library's main financier with a stake of $ 50,000. In 1853, Ticknor unsuccessfully tried to convince the Boston Athenaeum to merge with the proposed Boston Library, which opened in 1854 - with 12,000 volumes in two small rooms. In June 1856 Ticknor traveled back to Europe with shopping lists of the books proposed by experts. He negotiated with librarians and booksellers in England, Germany, Austria, France and Italy for 14 months. In 1860, Ticknor donated 2,400 of his own books to the Boston Library, and more soon after. He was on the board of directors from 1852 to 1866 and became chairman in 1865. In his life he donated money and books to this library several times and bequeathed it his own book collection, which mainly contained Spanish and Portuguese literature.

Ticknor died on January 26, 1871.

Works

Bust of George Ticknor in the Boston Public Library

Other works by Ticknor include:

  • Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on the History and Criticism of Spanish Literature (1823)
  • Outline of the Principal Events in the Life of General Lafayette (1825)
  • Remarks on Changes Lately Proposed or Adopted in Harvard University (1825)
  • The Remains of Nathan Appleton Haven, with a Memoir of his Life . Hillard, Metcalf, & company, Cambridge MA 1827; Text archive - Internet Archive
  • Remarks on the Life and Writings of Daniel Webster (1831)
  • Lecture on the Best Methods of Teaching the Living Languages , delivered, in 1832, before the American Institute of Education
  • History of the Spanish Literature . In three volumes.
  • Life of William Hickling Prescott (1864).
  • Works by and about George Ticknor in Internet Archive

literature

Web links

Commons : George Ticknor  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Ticknor, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American literary historian, Romance philologist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1791
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1871