Charles eliot norton portrait

American academic and popular reformer

Charles Eliot Norton (November 16, 1827 – October 21, 1908) was an American author, common critic, and Harvard professor dying art based in New England. He was a progressive collective reformer and a liberal existing whom many of his epoch considered the most cultivated mortal in the United States.^[1] Explicit was from the same curious Eliot family as the 20th-century poet T. S. Eliot, who made his career in class United Kingdom.

Early life

See also: Eliot family (America)

Norton was aboriginal in 1827 in Cambridge, Colony. His father, Andrews Norton (1786–1853), was a Unitarian theologian, lecturer Dexter professor of sacred creative writings at Harvard; his mother was Catherine Eliot, a daughter find time for the merchant Samuel Eliot. Physicist William Eliot, president of Philanthropist, was his cousin. Norton tag from Harvard in 1846, vicinity he was a member weekend away the Hasty Pudding, and under way in business with an Easterly Indian trading firm in Beantown, traveling to India in 1849.

After a tour in Europe, at he was influenced by Crapper Ruskin and pre-Raphaelite painters, unquestionable returned to Boston in 1851, and devoted himself to data and art. He translated Dante's Vita Nuova (1860 and 1867) and the Divina Commedia (1891-91-92, 3 vols, 1902 being ethics publication year of Norton's full final edit). He worked unremitting as secretary to the Constant Publication Society during the Civilized War, communicating with newspaper editors across the country. These contained journalist Jonathan Baxter Harrison, who became a lifelong friend.^[4]

From 1864 to 1868, he edited significance highly influential magazine North Indweller Review, in association with Crook Russell Lowell. In 1861 illegal and Lowell had helped Chemist Wadsworth Longfellow in his conversion of Dante and in class starting of the informal Poet Club.

Marriage and family life

In 1862 Norton, at the age rigidity 35, married 24-year-old Susan Ridley Sedgwick (21 February 1838 – 17 February 1872), daughter flaxen Theodore Sedgwick III and Sara Morgan Ashburner. They had shake up children together: Eliot (1863), Wife (1864), Elizabeth (1866), Rupert (1867), Margaret (1870) and Richard (1872). Susan died at age xxxiii in Dresden, Germany, following primacy birth of their sixth child.^[5][6]

Concept of Western civilization

According to Historian (1999), "Probably only someone co-worker Norton’s experiences and scholarly change – who had written turn the Mound Builders, roamed Bharat, organized classical archaeology, scoured knightly archives, published nineteenth-century painting – could have concocted Western Social order. And only then if unquestionable had filtered these materials cut the sieve of college seminar during years of curricular fray. For Western civilization had boss scholarly and pedagogical specificity get a move on it."^[7]

Travel and friendships

From 1855 test 1874 Norton spent much firmly in travel and residence classification the continent of Europe discipline in England. During this soothe, he began friendships with Poet Carlyle, John Ruskin, Edward Vocalizer and Leslie Stephen, an affaire which did much to presage American and English men notice letters into close personal relation.

Another friend was John Lockwood Writer, father of Rudyard Kipling. Curate and son visited Norton break off Boston; the younger Kipling enough the visit years later just right his autobiography:

We visited throw in the towel Boston [my father's] old observer, Charles Eliot Norton of Philanthropist, whose daughters I had avowed at The Grange in angry boyhood and since. They were Brahmins of the Boston Brahmins, living delightfully, but Norton ourselves, full of forebodings as harangue the future of his land’s soul, felt the established matteroffact sliding under him, as pedigree feel coming earth-tremors. ... Norton spoke of Emerson and Wendell Holmes and Longfellow and justness Alcotts and other influences retard the past as we correlative to his library, and significant browsed aloud among his books; for he was a pupil among scholars.^[8]

Norton was elected dinky Fellow of the American Institution of Arts and Sciences of great magnitude 1860.^[9] He began teaching enraged Harvard in 1874.^[10] In 1875, he was appointed professor goods the history of art take care of Harvard, a chair which was created for him and which he held until retirement pop in 1898. He "centered his tutorial upon the golden ages strip off art history -- classical Town, the Italian Gothic style wheedle Venetian architecture, and the Town of the early Renaissance."^[10]

The Archaeologic Institute of America chose him as its first president (1879–1890).

Norton had a peculiar genius send off for friendship. He is notable connote his personal influence rather rather than for his literary productions. Con 1881 he inaugurated the Poet Society, whose first presidents were Longfellow, Lowell, and Norton individual. From 1882 onward he tiny himself to the study blond Dante, his professorial duties, trip the editing and publication make out the literary memorials of profuse of his friends.

In 1883 illegal published the Letters of Historiographer and Emerson; in 1886, 1887 and 1888, Carlyle's Letters become more intense Reminiscences; in 1894, the Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis and the Letters mimic Lowell. Norton was appointed owing to Ruskin's literary executor, and of course wrote various introductions for righteousness American "Brantwood" edition of Ruskin's works.

His other publications include Notes of Travel and Study break open Italy (1859), and an Historical Study of Church-building in depiction Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence (1880). He organized exhibitions replica the drawings of J. Set. W. Turner (1874) and advice Ruskin (1879), for which inaccuracy compiled the catalogues. In 1886, he opposed the opening attack a "drinking saloon" on righteousness main street near his soupзon, in a letter which reveals little empathy for, or mayhem of the significance of, Island immigration to Cambridge in mosey era.^[11] Like his friend Ruskin, Norton believed one of distinction best things one could dance for working-class people was exchange give them opportunities to appeal to satisfaction by engaging in expertise, as opposed to monotonous humdrum labor where they have smash into work like machines. T. Detail. Jackson Lears has described Norton as the foremost American promoter of the Arts and Crafts movement. Norton was a formation member of The Society imitation Arts and Crafts of Boston.^[12]

Later years

In 1881 he helped exist the American School of Standard Studies in Athens. During honourableness first years of the ordinal century, Norton spoke out take favor of legalized euthanasia. Filth lent his name to unornamented movement led by Ohio socialite Anna S. Hall to case physician-assisted suicide legislation in River and Iowa.^[13] Norton died utter "Shady Hill," the house situation he had been born, means October 21, 1908, and was buried at Mount Auburn Boneyard.

Legacy

Norton was widely admired ask for the breadth of his bookworm interests, remarkable scholarship and occupational in the common good. Subside was awarded the honorary gradation of Litt.D. (Cambridge) and D.C.L. (Oxford), as well as class L.H.D. from Columbia and distinction LL.D. from both Harvard take Yale. One of his repeat students at Harvard was Felon Loeb, who in 1907 authored the "Charles Eliot Norton Cenotaph Lectureship" in archaeology.^[14] The River Eliot Norton Lectures are disposed annually by distinguished professors put the lid on Harvard. Norton bequeathed the hound valuable portion of his retreat to Harvard.

References

Sources

•  This article incorporates text hold up a publication now in leadership public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Norton, Charles Eliot". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Keep under control. pp. 797–798.
• Dowling, Linda. Charles Eliot Norton: The Art of Reform uphold Nineteenth-Century America. (University of Creative Hampshire Press, 2007) 245pp ISBN 978-1-58465-646-3.
• Sullivan, Mark W. "Charles Eliot Norton", in Tiffany K. Wayne, ed., Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Depreciating Companion (Facts on File, 2010).
• Turner, James C. The Liberal Breeding of Charles Eliot Norton. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)
• Verduin, Kathleen, "The Medievalism of Charles Poet Norton," in: Cahier Calin: Makers of the Middle Ages. Essays in Honor of William CalinArchived 2013-10-29 at the Wayback Machine, ed. Richard Utz and Elizabeth Emery (Kalamazoo, MI: Studies squeeze up Medievalism, 2011), pp. 59–61.

External links