F. O. Matthiessen
| F. O. Matthiessen | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Francis Otto Matthiessen February 19, 1902 Pasadena, California |
| Died | April 1, 1950 (aged 48) Boston, Massachusetts |
| Cause of death | Suicide by jumping from a height |
| Resting place | Springfield Cemetery, Springfield, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Polytechnic and Hackley Schools |
| Alma mater | Yale, Oxford and Harvard |
| Occupation | Historian, literary critic, educator |
| Known for | American Renaissance |
| Partner(s) | Russell Cheney |
| Awards | DeForest and Alpheus Henry Snow Prizes, Rhodes Scholarship |
Francis Otto Matthiessen (February 19, 1902 – April 1, 1950) was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies. His best known work, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman, celebrated the achievements of several 19th-century American authors and had a profound impact on a generation of scholars. Matthiessen was well known for his support of liberal causes and progressive politics. His contributions to the Harvard University community have been memorialized in several ways, including a recently endowed visiting professorship.
Matthiessen was born in Pasadena, California on February 19, 1902. He was the fourth of four children born to Frederick William Matthiessen (1868-1948) and Lucy Orne Pratt (1866). The family's three older siblings included Frederick William (1894), George Dwight (1897) and Lucy Orne (1898).
In Pasadena Matthiessen was a student at Polytechnic School. Following the separation of his parents, he relocated with his mother to his paternal grandparents home in Lasalle, Illinois. His grandfather, Frederick William Matthiessen, was an industrial leader in zinc production and a successful manufacturer of clocks and machine tools. He also served as mayor of Lasalle for ten years. The grandson completed his secondary education at Hackley School, in Tarrytown, New York.
In 1923 Matthiessen graduated from Yale University, where he was managing editor of the Yale Daily News, editor of the Yale Literary Magazine and a member of Skull and Bones. As the recipient of the university's Deforest Prize, Matthiessen titled his oration, Servants of the Devil, in which he proclaimed Yale's administration to be an "autocracy, ruled by a Corporation out of touch with college life and allied with big business". In his final year as a Yale undergraduate, he received the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize, awarded to the senior who through the combination of intellectual achievement, character and personality, shall be adjudged by the faculty to have done the most for Yale by inspiring in classmates an admiration and love for the best traditions of high scholarship.
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