Stuart Pratt Sherman

Stuart Pratt Sherman (October 1, 1881 – August 21, 1926) was an American literary critic, educator and journalist known for his philosophical "feud" with H. L. Mencken. The two men were very close in age, and their career paths have sometimes been compared, but Mencken outlived Sherman by three decades.

Background, education, and academic career

Sherman, who was distantly related to William Tecumseh Sherman, was born to New Englanders John and Ada Martha (Pratt) Sherman on October 1, 1881, in Anita, Iowa. The family later relocated to Rolfe, Iowa, and finally, in 1887, to Los Angeles, California. His father, a druggist and lover of music and poetry, had moved to California in search of a more healthful climate, but he died when Sherman was just 11. The family subsequently returned to New England.

Sherman entered Williams College in 1900, and he won prizes there in Latin, French and German, as well as becoming editor of the Williams Literary Monthly. He graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in 1906 after writing his thesis on the 17th-century dramatist John Ford.

Upon graduation, Sherman became an instructor at Northwestern University for a year before moving to the University of Illinois. In 1908 he was offered a position of the staff of The Nation, to which he was a frequent contributor, but declined when promoted to an associate professor. After appointment to full professor in 1911 and chairman of Illinois's English Department in 1914, he built the department into one of the strongest in the Midwest. He was a natural teacher, noted for his sound scholarship, especially on the works of Matthew Arnold, and for his passion for the living values of literature.