Holworthy Hall

Harold Everett Porter (19 September 1887 – 21 June 1936) was an American writer. Under the pen name of Holworthy Hall he published plays, verse, novels and short stories. He took his pseudonym from the dormitory for first-year students where he stayed at Harvard University.

Biography

Porter was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of Albert de Lance (D.) Porter, who was first a printer in Boston, and then a publisher in New York City as owner of the A. D. Porter Co. His mother, Louella née Root, was born in Ohio and raised in Massachusetts.

He attended Harvard College winning a scholarship in the year 1906–1907. He was on the lacrosse team in 1906–1907.

Porter was the editor of the Harvard Lampoon from 1906 to 1909 and an editor of the Harvard Advocate, the campus literary magazine, from 1907 to 1909.

He shared Room 13 in Holworthy Hall, the freshman's dormitory, with John Mansfield Groton, next door to Robert Middlemass (with whom he collaborated on The Valiant) and the artist Julian Ellsworth Garnsey in Room 14.

After graduating in 1909 he worked at the Boston publisher Little, Brown & Co., and then with his father's firm at the A.D. Porter Company. The firm published a monthly magazine, The Housewife, which he edited. His first short story under the pseudonym Holworthy Hall was printed in The Saturday Evening Post, and he continued to write short stories for the rest of his life.

In 1916, he was named the president of the A. D. Porter Company.

His short story "The Same Old Christmas Story" appeared in the 1,000th edition (or so) of the Harvard Advocate in May 1916. He was characterised in a review in the rival Harvard Crimson as a "noble graduate of 1907, with a bank account, a tender heart and too much leisure."