George Henry Calvert Biography

Although George Henry Calvert is not central to the American literary canon, his twentieth-century biographer, Ida Gertrude Everson, set him a monument that would be the pride of any American man of letters and has preserved his reputation. Indeed, George Henry Calvert: An American Literary Pioneer (1944)--to which any subsequent study is indebted--establishes the authoritative account of Calvert's considerable achievements, while simultaneously bringing the man and his work to life. Calvert's was a writing career that encompassed belles lettres (specifically poetry and drama), travel literature, literary criticism, and reviewing. While he was instrumental in actively promoting phrenology in the United States in the early days of the craze, his most important contribution to the intellectual scene was certainly his mediation and popularization of German letters. Indeed, his connoisseurship and judgment in that area exerted considerable influence upon a reading public fascinated by German writers and thinkers. For this intellectual energy...
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