Stuart Sherman

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For the American performance artist, see Stuart Sherman (artist).

Stuart Sherman
Ph.D.
)
Spouse
Ruth Bartlet Mears
​
(m. 1906)​
Children1

Stuart Pratt Sherman (October 1, 1881–August 21, 1926) was an American

literary critic, educator and journalist known for his philosophical "feud" with H. L. Mencken
. The two men were very close in age, and their career paths have sometimes been compared, but Mencken outlived Sherman by three decades.

Background, education, and academic career

Sherman, who was distantly related to

Los Angeles, California
. His father, a druggist and lover of music and poetry, had moved to California in search of a more healthful climate, but he died when Sherman was just 11. The family subsequently returned to New England.

Sherman entered

Ph.D. in 1906 after writing his thesis on the 17th-century dramatist John Ford.[1]

Upon graduation, Sherman became an instructor at

Midwest. He was a natural teacher, noted for his sound scholarship, especially on the works of Matthew Arnold
, and for his passion for the living values of literature.

In April 1924, Sherman became editor of “Books,” the literary supplement to the New York Herald Tribune, which under his editorship became the leading American critical journal.

Sherman was initially an advocate of the

German-American background hindered his ability to express "spiritual values".[3]

Controversy

With the entry of the United States into

The Bookman, “Is There Anything to be Said for Literary Traditions?” where he attacked literary modernism. Interpreting the challenge to conventional morals by younger literary figures as moral relativism, Sherman defended traditional values, nationalism, and even Puritanism, a popular scapegoat of the time. As the decade of the 1920s unfolded however, many[who?] argue that Sherman moved perceptibly to the left, eventually embracing modernism and confessing that he had erred in trying to make men good instead of happy. Sherman also changed his mind about the merits of Dreiser's work, and praised An American Tragedy for what he regarded as its "masterly exhaustiveness" of character development.[3]

Personal life

In 1906, Sherman married Ruth Bartlet Mears, daughter of a chemistry professor at Williams, and the couple had a son. Sherman was on vacation with his wife on Lake Michigan seven miles away from Manistee, Michigan when he suffered a fatal heart attack after an accident overturned his canoe.[4] He died on August 21, 1926, at age 44.[4] He is buried in Manchester, Vermont.[5]

Published works

References

  1. ^
    ISSN 0037-3052
    .
  2. ISBN 9780813531236
    (pp. 276-277)
  3. ^
    ISBN 9780313316807
    (p. 333)
  4. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved November 17, 2023.
  5. ^ "Stuart P. Sherman Funeral Today". New York Times. August 25, 1926.
  • Jacob Zeitlin and Homer Woodbridge, Life and Letters of Stuart P. Sherman. 2 Volumes. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1929.
  • “Stuart Pratt Sherman” in Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, N.Y.C., 1936, article by Earnest Southerland Bates.

External links

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