Dictionary of Literary Biography on Charles Anderson Dana
Charles Anderson Dana (8 August 1819-17 October 1897), editor and journalist, was born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire. His mother died when he was nine and, after staying three years with relatives in Vermont, Dana went to Buffalo, New York, as a clerk in his uncle's store. There he taught himself the Seneca Indian language and Latin, and independently pursued literary studies. These stood him in good stead when his uncle's business fell victim to the Panic of 1837 and he was forced to look elsewhere for a living. With the eventual goal of attending Harvard, Dana founded a literary society in Buffalo, and within two years had saved about two hundred dollars from it. With this money and high hopes, he set off for Cambridge.
Entering Harvard in 1839, Dana worked hard to stay in school. Though he ranked safely in the top fifth of his class, his money slowly gave out and he was forced to spend two winter terms teaching. His exhausting pace caught up with him in his sophomore year, when he stayed up all night to read a cheaply printed edition of Dickens's Oliver Twist by candlelight, severely impairing his eyesight. The damage was bad enough to force his withdrawal from Harvard in June 1841.
While waiting to recover full use of his vision, Dana took a job teaching at Scituate, Massachusetts, but soon became restless. Dana, who had earlier confessed to a "supersublimated transcendentalism," wrote to George Ripley concerning his community at Brook Farm. Though he basically sympathized with Ripley and his followers, Dana disagreed with their religious beliefs and even doubted the eventual success of their project. Nevertheless, Dana purchased shares in the community and joined them in September. He soon became the community's secretary and taught Greek and German in the school. He married in March 1846. Dana's involvement in a lecture series with Horace Greeley, however, led to a growing interest in the New York literary and social scene, and he left Brook Farm for that city in 1846.
When Dana went to New York, he began in earnest the career in journalism that would eventually ensure his fame. By February 1847 he was city editor of the New York Tribune , working for his friend Greeley. In the summer of 1848 he went to Europe, traveling through France, Germany, and Austria, and sending back a weekly letter apiece to the Tribune, the Harbinger, the Philadelphia American, the New York Commercial Advertiser, and the Boston Daily Chronotype.
In March 1849 Dana returned to New York and resumed his work on the Tribune. Always interested in social reforms, he opposed slavery and labor unions and supported a high protective tariff. He also began publishing books, including a translation of German children's stories, The Black Ant (1848), and a pictorial work, Meyer's Universum (1852-1853). By 1855 he was managing editor of the Tribune and, because of Greeley's frequent absences from the paper, was really in control of its editorial direction and contents. He continued publishing his own works, editing the enormously popular The Household Book of Poetry (1858), which went through many printings and eleven editions in his lifetime; in 1858 he and Ripley began The New American Cyclopedia, which was completed in 1863 in sixteen volumes.
When the Civil War broke out, Dana--and through him the Tribune--became a vigorous supporter of Lincoln and his policies. The degree of his support bothered Greeley and in May 1862 Dana, under pressure from Greeley, left the Tribune. The move proved fortunate for Dana, for he began work under the Secretary of War. In his government duties, Dana traveled with many of the great Union generals, including Grant, reporting on their activities to the War Department. The work of these years is recalled in Dana's Recollections of the Civil War (1898). In July 1854, the war over, Dana resigned and resumed his journalistic career.
After a brief stint on the unsuccessful Chicago Republican, Dana returned to New York where, with friends, he bought the faltering New York Sun in late 1867. From January 1868, when he assumed the editorship, until his death, Dana was the Sun, and the paper reflected his social awareness by such actions as its constant attacks on the corrupt Grant administration. Dana also gave a number of good writers employment on the Sun, including Jacob Riis, David Graham Phillips, and Richard Harding Davis.
In his later years Dana made personal and professional travels that formed the basis for two other books. Trips to Europe in 1879 and 1882 gave him the opportunity to write travel letters that were later collected as Eastern Journeys: Some Notes of Travel ... (1898). A series of lectures on the newspaper world, delivered between 1888 and 1894, were collected as The Art of Newspaper Making (1895). Dana fell ill in June 1897 and died that October.
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