Bliss Perry

Bliss Perry (25 November 1860 to 13 February 1954), was a United States editor and scholar.

Biography

Perry was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts and was educated at Williams College, Williamstown, as well as the universities of Berlin and Strassburg (then in Germany).

Perry taught at Williams from 1886 until 1893. From then until 1900 he taught at Princeton University. While at Princeton, he encountered influential figures like Woodrow Wilson, Dean Andrew West and former President Grover Cleveland, about whom he wrote entertainingly in his autobiographical work And Gladly Teach. He taught at Harvard University between 1907 and 1930 and was Harvard lecturer at the University of Paris from 1909 to 1910. From 1899 to 1909 he was the editor of The Atlantic Monthly.

He was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French. He edited the works of Edmund Burke, Sir Walter Scott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. From 1905 until 1909 he was general editor of the Cambridge edition of the major American poets. He wrote extensively, including works on Walt Whitman, John Greenleaf Whittier, Thomas Carlyle and Emerson. He was also a prolific writer of novels, short fiction, essays, studies in poetry and an autobiography.

Perry is also famed in certain Vermont lore for "establishing" the "summer colony" of Greensboro, Vermont. He enjoyed its tranquil setting and its distance from the cares of the busy world of the Atlantic Monthly and his Professorships. Fly fishing was one of his key hobbies, which led to the publication of "Fishing With a Worm."

He died in Exeter, New Hampshire. He was the brother of Dr. Lewis Perry, Principal of Exeter Academy from 1914 to 1946.

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