Ellery Sedgwick

Ellery Sedgwick

Ellery Sedgwick (born February 27, 1872 in New York City , United States , † April 21, 1960 in Washington, DC ) was an American writer and until 1938 editor of the Atlantic Monthly .

biography

family

Ellery Sedgwick's parents were Henry Dwight and Henrietta Sedgwick, who was a granddaughter of William Ellery . His family was very influential in Stockbridge and had a long tradition in literature. The writers Catherine Maria Sedgwick and Henry Dwight Sedgwick were among his ancestors.

In 1904 he married Mabel Cabot and had four children with her: Ellery, Cabot, Theodora and Henrietta. His wife died in 1937 at a time when he was suffering from illness himself; he had to stay in bed for months between 1938 and 1939 due to sciatica . In 1939 he married Isabel Marjorie Russell, but the marriage remained childless.

education

Sedgwick attended Groton School until 1890 and then studied at Harvard University , where he received his degree in 1894. He then returned to the Groton School to teach classical studies there. In 1896 he took a position as a deputy editor at the children's and youth magazine The Youth's Companion . In 1900 he moved to Leslie's Monthly Magazine as an editor , where he stayed for four years. Other positions followed at McClure's Magazine and D. Appleton & Company .

Career

Sedgwick began his career with Atlantic Monthly in 1908 when he bought the magazine from Houghton Mifflin . At the time, it had a circulation of 15,000 and produced an annual loss of $ 5,000 (approximately $ 140,000 today). Sedgwick was able to quickly reverse this, and by 1928 the circulation was already 137,000 copies. Sedgwick was the first American publisher to publish the work of Ernest Hemingway . In 1938 he retired from day-to-day business and sold the magazine in 1939.

Awards

In 1914 Sedgwick was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1915 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 1920 he was awarded the Doctor of Letters (Litt.D.) from Tufts University and in 1921 from Dartmouth College . He also received a Doctor of Humane Letters (LhD.) From Syracuse University .

Own works

In 1899 Sedgwick published a biography of Thomas Paine . In 1946 his autobiography The Happy Profession was published . The following year he published his favorite tracks from his time with the Atlantic Monthly under the title Atlantic Harvest . He was also a co-author of the 1939 book Novel and Story: A Book of Modern Readings .

Further commitment

From a professional point of view, Sedgwick was not limited to editing. In 1918 he became vice president and part owner of Rumford Press , where he remained active until the 1940s. He held beyond his contacts with schools Groton and Harvard upright and was there as well as at the Boston Public Library as curator ( trustee active).

Publications

• Sedgwick, Ellery: Thomas Paine . Ed .: Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe (=  The Beacon biographies of eminent Americans ). Small, Maynard & Company, Boston 1899, OCLC 377405 .
• Sedgwick, Ellery: The Happy Profession . Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1946, ISBN 978-0-8371-6039-9 .
• Sedgwick, Ellery: Atlantic harvest . memoirs of the Atlantic, wherein are to be found stories, anecdotes, and opinions, controversial and otherwise; together with a variety of matter, relevant and irrelevant, accompanied by certain obdurate convictions. Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1947, OCLC 635097 .
• Sedgwick, Ellery et al .: Novel and story, a book of modern readings . Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1939, OCLC 3817451 .
• Sedgwick, Ellery: Willa Cather. In: The Atlantic . June 1, 1937, accessed February 9, 2014 . 
• Sedgwick, Ellery: A History of the Atlantic Monthly 1857-1909 . Yankee Humanism at High Tide and Ebb. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA 1994, ISBN 978-0-87023-919-9 ( online in Google Book Search [accessed February 9, 2014]).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Ellery Sedgwick papers 1898-1969. Massachusetts Historical Society , accessed February 7, 2014 . 
2. ^ Members: Ellery Sedgwick. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 25, 2019 .