Francis Bowen

Francis Bowen (BOH-ən; September 8, 1811 – January 22, 1890) was an American philosopher, writer, and educationalist.

Biography

He was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He was educated at Mayhew School, Boston, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Harvard University, graduating from the latter in 1833. While attending Harvard, he taught school at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, and Concord, Lexington and Northborough, Massachusetts. After graduating from Harvard, he taught for two years at Phillips Exeter Academy, returning to Harvard from 1835 to 1839 to tutor in Greek and teach intellectual philosophy and political economy. In 1839 he went to Europe, and, while living in Paris, met Sismondi, de Gerando, and other scholars. He returned to Cambridge in 1841 and devoted himself to literature. He was editor and proprietor of the North American Review from 1843 to 1854, writing, during this time, about one fourth of the articles in it. In 1848 and 1849, he delivered lectures before the Lowell Institute on the application of metaphysical and ethical science to the evidences of religion.

In 1850 he was appointed McLean professor of history at Harvard, but his appointment was disapproved by the board of overseers on account of political opinions he had expressed concerning the Hungarian revolution of 1848. Bowen had written two articles on Hungary for his North American Review:

The War of Races in Hungary (January 1850) and The Rebellion of the Slavonic, Wallachian, and German Hungarians against the Magyars (January 1851).