Robert Herrick (writer)

Robert Herrick (1910)

Robert Welch Herrick (born April 21, 1868 in Cambridge , Massachusetts , †  December 23, 1938 in Charlotte Amalie , US Virgin Islands ) was an American writer . In 1935 he was acting governor of the US Virgin Islands.

Career

Robert Herrick studied at Harvard University until 1890 . He later lectured at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Between 1905 and 1923 he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago , where he taught literature. During this time he wrote 13 novels. His best known work was the novel Web of Life . His works describe the effects of industrial society on sensitive and lonely people. The psychologist and philosopher William James praised Herrick's literary work and compared it to the British George Robert Gissing .

He briefly entered the political arena in 1935 when he was appointed acting governor of the Virgin Islands. The background was a series of scandals that led to the dismissal of his predecessor Paul Martin Pearson . His appointment was necessary because the actual Lieutenant Governor Lawrence William Cramer was absent from the Virgin Islands for some time because of hearings regarding the scandals mentioned before the US Senate in Washington, DC . After the hearings ended, Herrick's term as governor ended again, as Cramer had meanwhile been appointed as the regular new incumbent.

In 1908 Herrick was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Robert Herrick died on December 23, 1938 in Charlotte Amalie on Saint Croix of complications from a heart attack. He was married to Harriett Peabody Emery since 1894, with whom he had a son and two daughters.

Web links

• Brief biography at the University of Chicago

Individual evidence

1. ^ Members: Robert Herrick. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 3, 2019 .