Harry Thurston Peck

Harry Thurston Peck (November 24, 1856 – March 23, 1914) was an American classical scholar, author, editor, historian and critic.

Biography

Peck was born in Stamford, Connecticut. He was educated in private schools and at Columbia College, graduating in 1881, where his literary gifts attracted wide attention. His address at the conclusion of that year's commencement exercises was "witty, pathetic, and full of clever allusions" according to The New York Times. "Bouquets fell at his feet by the score as he bowed his way off the stage." As an undergraduate at Columbia College, Peck was a member of the Philolexian Society, the University's literary and debating society. Upon graduation, he immediately joined the faculty as a Latin tutor, becoming a professor in 1888. He was among several faculty members appointed to newly created chairs when he became Anthon Professor of Latin Language and Literature at the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Columbia's founding in 1904.

Peck also wrote travel guides and produced translations and works for children under a number of pseudonyms, and he was a frequent and forceful contributor to magazines and newspapers. He was editor in chief of Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities and editor of the Students' Series of Latin Classics and Columbia University Studies in Classical Philology. He served as the first editor in chief of The Bookman magazine, worked on its staff from 1895 to 1906, and created America's first best-seller list for its pages in 1895. He was also editor in chief of the International Cyclopaedia from 1890 to 1901 and co-editor of the first edition of the New International Encyclopedia (1902–1904). In 1906 he published a nearly 800-page monument of progressive historiography, Twenty Years of the Republic 1885–1905, expansive, dense with detail and reference, penetrating, scathing in its revelations of actual social, economic and political conditions. It was excoriated in the metropolitan press and plainly had much to do with his later difficulties.