Sylvester Judd

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Sylvester Judd

Sylvester Judd (July 23, 1813 – January 26, 1853) was an American novelist.

Biography

Sylvester Judd III was born on July 23, 1813, in Westhampton, Massachusetts[1] to Sylvester Judd II and Apphia Hall.[2] He studied at Hopkins Academy in Hadley, Massachusetts, graduated from Yale College in 1836, and from Harvard Divinity School in 1840. While a student, on April 4, 1838, Judd traveled to Concord, Massachusetts to meet Ralph Waldo Emerson after reading his essay "Epic Poetry". Emerson was pleased by Judd's interest in seeking a mystical identification with Christ.[3]

Judd was ordained a Unitarian minister on October 1, 1840, becoming pastor of a church in Augusta, Maine. Early in 1841, Judd met Jane Elizabeth Williams, the daughter of United States Senator Reuel Williams.[4] The couple married on August 31, 1841; they had three children.

Criticism

American critic and poet James Russell Lowell called Judd's novel Margaret "the most emphatically American book ever written".[5] He mentioned the novel in his long satire A Fable for Critics (1848) as "the first Yankee book / With the soul of Down East in 't, and things farther East".[6] In a 39-page review, however, critic William Bourne Oliver Peabody called the work unfinished and its characters and style inconsistent.[7] After publishing his novel Philo, Judd sent a copy to Edward Everett Hale, who responded, "I think Philo glorious."[8]

Works

  • 1838: A Young Man's Account of his Conversion from Calvinism
  • 1845: Margaret: A Tale of the Real and the Ideal, Blight and Bloom; Including Sketches of a Place Not Before Described, Called Mons Christi, a Transcendentalist novel (revised 1851)
  • 1850: Philo: An Evangeliad, a religious poem
  • 1850: Richard Edney and the Governor's Family: A Rus-Urban Tale
  • 1854: The Church, in a Series of Discourses
  • The White Hills (a novel unpublished during his lifetime)

He also produced a large number of sermons and religious addresses.

References

  1. ↑ Dedmond, Francis B. Sylvester Judd. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1980: 17. ISBN 0-8057-7305-3
  2. ↑ Hathaway, Richard D. Sylvester Judd's New England. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981: 41. ISBN 0-271-00307-3
  3. ↑ Dedmond, Francis B. Sylvester Judd. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1980: 33. ISBN 0-8057-7305-3
  4. ↑ Dedmond, Francis B. Sylvester Judd. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1980: 39. ISBN 0-8057-7305-3
  5. ↑ Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 198. ISBN 0-8090-3477-8
  6. ↑ Hathaway, Richard D. Sylvester Judd's New England. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981: 13. ISBN 0-271-00307-3
  7. ↑ Dedmond, Francis B. Sylvester Judd. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1980: 77–78. ISBN 0-8057-7305-3
  8. ↑ Hathaway, Richard D. Sylvester Judd's New England. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981: 349. ISBN 0-271-00307-3

Further reading

  • Eliot, Samuel A. Heralds of a Liberal Faith. Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1910. (pp. 301-307) googlebooks Retrieved May 4, 2008
  • Sylvester Judd (the present subject's father), Thomas Judd and His Descendants, J. &. L. Metcalf, Northampton, 1856.
  • Arethusa Hall, Life and Character of Sylvester Judd, Boston, 1854.
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