Louis Filler

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Louis Filler (May 2, 1911 – December 22, 1998), a Philadelphia-reared, Columbia-trained writer on muckraking and abolitionism from 1939 to 1998, taught American civilization at Antioch College from 1946 to 1976. His anthologies and essays on Americans who influence public perception and values, as journalists, essayists, writers of fiction, editors, public speakers, poets, and politicians, examine the process of social forgetting and affirm the value of figures who later became obscure and the continued value of their work.

Paine and Emerson, Bellamy and George, Veblen and Upton Sinclair . . . [and] Melville [who] wrote about the indignities suffered by able seamen . . . coped with their own times. Can we cope with ours [by means of] stories and essays . . . live readers to appreciate live prose . . .an informed critical taste . . . knowledge, data, and a memory for past experience . . . [and] is there a better phrase for this than "social significance"? ("The Question of Social Significance," Union Review 1:1:66-71, 1962)

Emerson and Thoreau were radicals, and were so perceived in their own time. ("Wendell Phillips and the Necessity for Radicalism," Introduction to Wendell Phillips on Civil Rights and Freedom, 1965, p. ix)

Books

• Crusaders for American Liberalism: The Story of the Muckrakers, 1939 ff. (1993 as The Muckrakers)
• Randolph Bourne, 1943, 1965
• Laundry and Related Activities of the Quartermaster General, 1946 USGPO [1]
• The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860, 1960 ff
• A Dictionary of American Social Reform, 1963, 1970; revised 1982 as A Dictionary of American Social Change
• The Unknown Edwin Markham: His Mystery and Its Significance, 1966
• Muckraking and Progressivism: an Interpretive Bibliography, 1976
• Appointment at Armageddon: Muckraking and Progressivism in American Life, 1976; Muckraking and Progressivism in the American Tradition, new intro, 1996
• Voice of the Democracy: A Critical Biography of David Graham Phillips: Journalist, Novelist, Progressive, 1978
• Abolition and Social Justice in the Era of Reform, 1972
• Crusade Against Slavery: Friends, Foes, and Reforms 1820-1860, 1986
• Dictionary of American Conservatism, 1987
• Distinguished Shades: Americans Whose Lives Live On, 1992

Edited Works

• The New Stars: Life and Labor in Old Missouri, Manie Kendley Morgan, 1940
• Mr. Dooley: Now and Forever, Finley Peter Dunne, 1954
• The Removal of the Cherokee Nation: Manifest Destiny or National Dishonor?, 1962, 1977
• The World of Mr. Dooley, Finley Peter Dunne, 1962
• Late Nineteenth-Century Liberalism: Representative Selections 1880-1900, 1962, 1978
• The Anxious Years, 1963, anthology of 1930s literature; as American Anxieties, 1993
• Horace Mann and Others, Robert L. Straker, 1963
• Democrats and Republicans: Ten Years of the Republic, Harry Thurston Peck, 1964
• A History of the People of the United States, John Bach McMaster, 1964
• The President Speaks, 1964, major twentieth century addresses
• Wendell Phillips on Civil Rights and Freedom, 1965
• Horace Mann on the Crisis in Education', 1965; Spanish translation 1972
• Wendell Phillips on Civil Rights and Freedom, 1965
• The Ballad of the Gallows-Bird, Edwin Markham, 1967
• Old Wolfville: Chapters from the Fiction of A(lfred) H(enry) Lewis, 1968
• Slavery in the United States, 1972, 1998
• Abolition and Social Justice, 1972
• From Populism to Progressivism, 1978, anthology
• A Question of Quality, series : Popularity and Value in Modern Creative Writing and Seasoned Authors for a New Season, 1976-80
• Vanguards and Followers: Youth in the American Tradition, 1978, 1995
• Voice of the Democracy: A Critical Biography of David Graham Phillips: Journalist Novelist, Progressive, 1978
• An Ohio Schoolmistress: the Memoirs of Irene Hardy, 1980
• Contemporaries: Portraits in the Progressive Era, David Graham Phillips, 1981
• The President in the 20th Century, 1983

Introductions

• Chatterton, Ernest Lacy, 1952
• Plantation and Frontier, Ulrich B. Phillips, John R. Commons, et al. A Documentary History of American Industrial Society, 1958
• The Acquisition of Political, Social and Industrial Rights of Man in America, John Bach McMaster, 1961
• My Autobiography, S(amuel) S. McClure, 1962
• A Modern Symposium, G. Lowes Dickinson], 1963
• Horace Mann and Others: Chapters from the History of Antioch College, Robert Lincoln Straker, 1963
• A Statistical History of the American Presidential Elections, Svend Petersen, 1963
• Samuel Gompers: A Biography, Bernard Mandel, 1963
• The Political Depravity of the Founding Fathers, John Bach McMaster, 1964
• A Political History of Slavery, William Henry Smith, 1966
• Georgia and States' Rights, Ulrich B. Phillips, 1967
• The Pantarch: A Biography of Stephen Pearl Andrews, Madeleine B. Stern, 1968
• The Cost; The Deluge; The Grain of Dust, David Graham Phillips, 1969, 1969, 1970
• Forty Years of It, Brand Whitlock, 1970
• The Columbia Conserve Company: An Experiment in Workers' Management and Ownership, William Hapgood, 1975
• The American People: Stories, Legends, Tales, Traditions and Songs, Benjamin A. Botkin, 1998

Also in Published Volumes

• "Movements to Abolish the Death Penalty in the United States," in Murder and the Death Penalty, 1952
• "The Dilemma, So-Called, of the American Liberal," in Antioch Review Anthology, 1953
• "The Muckrakers: in Flower and in Failure," in Essays in American Historiography: in Honor of Allan Nevins, 1960
• "Anti-Slavery Movements in the United States," in Collier’s Encyclopedia, 1962
• "Slavery and Anti-Slavery," in Main Problems in American History, 1964
• "A Tale of Two Authors: Theodore Dreiser and David Graham Phillips," in New Voices in American Studies, 1966

Among Other Articles and Reviews

• "Susan Lenox: an American Odyssey," Accent, Fall 1940
• "Wolfville: the Fiction of A(lfred) H(enry) Lewis," New Mexico Quarterly, Spring, 1943
• "Edward Bellamy and the Spirited Unrest," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, April 1948
• "Randolph Bourne: Reality and Myth," The Humanist, Spring 1951
• "Harry Alan Potamkin," Midwest Jour., Winter 1951
• "Why Historians Ignore Folklore," Midwest Folklore, Summer 1954
• "John Chamberlain and American Liberalism," Colorado Quarterly, Fall 1957
• "The Question of Social Significance]," Union Review 1:1:66-71, 1962

Verse

Two Poems, 1935