Raymond MacDonald Alden

Raymond Macdonald Alden (March 30, 1873 – September 27, 1924) was an American scholar and educator.

Biography

Alden was born on March 30, 1873, in New Hartford, New York. His parents were the writer Isabella Macdonald Alden and Reverend Gustavus Rossenberg Alden. He studied at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1894 with a Ph.D. his dissertation was on "Rise of Formal Satire in England under Classical Influence" and his advisor was Felix Emanuel Schelling. He took post-graduate studies there at Penn and at Harvard. In 1894–95 he was instructor in English at Columbian University (now George Washington University); in 1896–97 assistant in English at Harvard; and in 1898–99 senior fellow in English at the University of Pennsylvania. He was chosen to fill the position of assistant professor of English literature and rhetoric at Stanford University in 1899, then became associate professor there in 1909. He accepted the chair of English at the University of Illinois in 1911.

He edited several plays of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists and in 1910 an edition of Thoreau's Walden. Alden also became known as a contributor to educational journals and short stories to magazines. In 1905, his story "In the Promised Land" won a $1,000 prize for third place in a Collier's Weekly contest. In 1913 he edited an edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint.

He is best remembered today for his published children's stories, most notably the Christmas story Why the Chimes Rang, which remained in illustrated print for over five decades and was widely performed as a theater production.