© The contents of this finding aid are the copyright of the University of Chicago Library
© 2006 University of Chicago Library
The collection is open for research.
When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Herrick, Robert. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
Robert Herrick (1868-1938), novelist and professor of composition and literature, was born into the post-Civil War gentility of Cambridge, Massachusetts and died in the Virgin Islands, a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal government. Of old New England stock, he was also educated in New England. He attended the Cambridge High School and in 1885 entered Harvard, where his mother's cousin George Herbert Palmer was Professor of Philosophy. At Harvard he studied under such men as Francis James Child, George Lyman Kittredge, William James, and Barrett Wendell, and while still an undergraduate published his first stories in the Harvard Advocate and Harvard Monthly. He was associated, either in friendship or through participation in the Monthly or the Mermaid Club, with such men as Philip Abbot, George Rice Carpenter, Jefferson Fletcher (who was to be his brother-in-law), Norman and Hutchins Hapgood, Bernard Berenson, George Pierce Baker, George Santayana, William Vaughn Moody, and Robert Morss Lovett.
After graduation from Harvard in 1890, Herrick taught composition and literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1893, he accepted an appointment at the University of Chicago, where his cousin by marriage, Alice Freeman Palmer, was already established as the University's first Dean of Women. Here he developed a writing program similar to that taught at Harvard by A. S. Hill and Barrett Wendell, and was instrumental in persuading Robert Morss Lovett and William Vaughn Moody to join the English faculty.
In 1894, Herrick married his first cousin, Harriet Peabody Emery. The marriage was dissolved in 1916; and one son, Philip Herrick, survived his parents. In 1899, the Herricks acquired a lot at 5735 Lexington (now University) Avenue and in 1900, engaged Hugh M. Garden to design a home for them. The local press, chafing over Herrick's realistic descriptions of Chicago in The Web of Life (1900), ridiculed the project as intended to educate the taste of those accustomed to Chicago's "vulgarity;" but the house (now Calvert House) has come to be regarded as an important precursor of the "Prairie School" of architecture. In 1913, Herrick purchased a house and land in York Village, Maine; and this he regarded as his permanent home.
From 1909 to 1923, when he resigned his professorship, Herrick spent only part of each year at the University, the other part writing and traveling. In 1935, he was appointed Government Secretary for the Virgin Islands.
During his lifetime, he published three collections of short stories and twenty-one novels, several textbooks, and a study of World War I. He also wrote frequently for periodicals: short stories (several early ones published under the pseudonym of Austin Smith), literary and political essays, book reviews and editorials. In addition, during the period of World War I, he wrote a regular column for the Chicago Tribune.
The Robert Herrick Papers contain correspondence; manuscripts of novels, plays, short stories, and literary criticism. The collection also includes essays and lectures on political, educational, and literary subjects. Herrick's correspondents include Robert Morss Lovett, Jane Addams, William Dean Howells, Harriet Monroe, William Rainey Harper, Norman Hapgood, and Bernard Berenson.
There are ten series in this collection, which include:
I. Correspondence
II. Autobiographical Documents
III. Literary Manuscripts
IV. Essays and Lectures
V. Teaching Notes
VI. World War I Papers, Articles, and Memorabilia
VII. Virgin Island Papers
VIII. Reviews of Novels
IX. Legal-Sized
X. Miscellaneous Correspondence, Interviews, and Ephemera
Series X consists of addenda materials including letters written to Blake Nevius in response to his inquiries concerning the life and work of the American novelist, Robert Herrick [1868-1938], as well as other research materials. One or two of the letters were written when Nevius was preparing his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Chicago on "The Novels of Robert Herrick" in 1946-7; most of the letters, however, are dated ca. 1951-1960 when he was working on the biographical study, Robert Herrick: The Development of a Novelist (University of California Press, 1962). The collection includes correspondence with friends, students, and colleagues of Herrick, among whom are the novelist Winston Churchill, Robert Morss Lovett, John P. Marquand, Forrest Rosaire, Edward Wagenknecht; Herrick's housekeeper during his last years, Miss Annie Luckie; Philip Herrick, the author's son; librarians and custodians of Herrick manuscripts, and researchers working for Nevius. Photocopies of letters from George Santayana and Bernard Berenson to Mrs. Barnet Levy are also included. One folder contains transcripts of interviews with Philip Herrick; another, miscellaneous materials related to Robert Herrick: copies of several of his letters; a map of Cambridge, Massachusetts as it was during Herrick's youth, and miscellaneous research notes.