OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809-1894), a celebrated American author, born the son of a Congregational minister, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated in arts and medicine at Harvard; became professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth College, but resigned and settled in Boston as a general practitioner; in 1847 he was elected to the chair of Anatomy in Harvard, a position he held till his resignation in 1882; a successful professor, it is as an essayist, novelist, and poet that he is remembered; the appearance of "The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table," with its quaint humour, fresh thought, and charming egotism took literary America by storm; the "Professor" and the "Poet at the Breakfast-Table" followed in after years, and remain his most widely popular works; "Elsie Venner," a novel dealing with the problem of heredity, "The Guardian Angel," "Songs of Many Seasons," "Memoirs of Motley and of Emerson," are some of his many works, all of which have the impress of his bright, engaging personality.