Robert Carter (editor)

Robert Carter
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Robert Carter (February 5, 1819 Albany, New York – February 15, 1879 Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a United States editor, historian and author. He was involved in the formation of the Republican Party.

He received a common school education, and passed one term in the Jesuit college of Chambly, Quebec. At 15, he was appointed assistant to the state librarian, who was also his guardian, at the state library at Albany. He remained there until 1838. At this time he began to publish poems and sketches in the daily papers, his first contribution being a long poem, which he dropped stealthily into the editor's letterbox, and which appeared the next day with flattering comments, but so frightfully misprinted that he hardly knew it. This experience and a natural aptitude led him to acquire proofreading as an accomplishment, at which he became very expert.

In 1841 he went to Boston, where he formed a lifelong friendship with James Russell Lowell, and together they began The Pioneer, a Literary and Critical Magazine, a monthly magazine which the Cyclopædia of American Literature said was “of too fine a cast to be successful.” Nevertheless, its want of success was due, not to the editors, but to the publisher, who mismanaged it and failed when but three numbers had been issued. Among the contributors were Poe, Hawthorne, Whittier, Neal, Barrett (afterward Mrs. Browning), and the sculptor Story. Carter began in its pages a serial novel entitled The Armenian's Daughter.

He next spent two years in editing statistical and geographical works, and writing for periodicals. His story, “The Great Tower of Tarudant,” ran through several numbers of the Broadway Journal, then edited by Poe. In 1845 he became a clerk in the post office at Cambridge, and from 1847 to 1848 was private secretary to Prescott the historian. His elaborate article on the character and habits of Prescott, written for the New York Tribune just after the historian's death in 1859, was republished in a memorial volume issued by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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