The Harvard Book

If Harvard can be said to have a literature all its own, then few universities can equal it in scope. Here lies the reason for this anthologya collection of what Harvard men (teachers, students, graduates) have written about Harvard in the more than three centuries of its history. The emphasis is upon entertainment, upon readability; and the selections have been arranged to show something of the many variations of Harvard life. For all Harvard menand that part of the general public which is interested in American college lifehere is a rich treasury. In such a Harvard collection one may expect to find the giants of Harvards last 75 yearsEliot, Lowell, and Conantattempting a definition of what Harvard means. But there are many other familiar namesHenry Dunster, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Henry Adams, Charles M. Flandrau, William and Henry James, Owen Wister, Thomas Wolfe, John P. Marquaud. Here is Mistress Eatons confession about the bad fish served to the wretched students of Harvards early years; here too is President Holyokes account of the burning of Harvard Hall; a students description of his trip to Portsmouth with that aged and Johnsonian character, Tutor Henry Flynt; Cleveland Amorys retelling of the murder of Dr. George Parkman; Mayor Quineys story of what happened in Cambridge when Andrew Jackson came to get an honorary degree; Alistair Cookes commentary on the great HarvardYale cricket match of 1951. There are many sorts of Harvard men in this bookpopular fellows like Hammersmith, snobs like Bertie and Billy, the sensitive and the lonely like Edwin Arlington Robinson and Thomas Wolfe, and independent thinkers like John Reed. Teachers and pupils, scholars and sports, heroes and rogues pass across the Harvard stage through the struggles and the tragedies to the moments of triumph like the Bicentennial or the visit of Winston Churchill. And speaking of visits, there are the visitors toothe first impressions of Harvard set down by an assortment of travelers as various as Dickens, Trollope, Rupert Brooke, Harriet Martineau, and Francisco de Miranda, the precursor of Latin American independence. For the Harvard addict this volume is indispensable. For the general reader it is the sort of book that goes with a good living-room fire or the blissful moments of early to bed.