biography
| name: |
Adams, Henry (Brooks)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1838–1918)
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| biography:
| Historian, born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was the grandson of John Quincy Adams, son of Charles Francis Adams, and brother of Brooks Adams. After graduating from Harvard, he studied law in Germany, and served as secretary to his father during the latter's term as ambassador to England (1861–8). On returning to the USA he went to Washington, DC, but became disillusioned by the new government and turned to teaching mediaeval and American history at Harvard (1870–7) (where he is credited with introducing the seminar system into US education). He left teaching and returned to Washington, where although he had a small circle of elite friends, he remained out of step with the new nation, a view he expressed in his book Democracy (1880). Among his major works are the monumental History of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (9 vols, 1870–7) and the History of the United States of America from 1801 to 1817 (9 vols, 1889–91), as well as biographies. After the death of his wife, Marian Hooper Adams (1885), he travelled the world but always returned to Washington. He privately published Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904) and a classic autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1907; Pulitzer, 1919), but their success led to trade editions (1913 and 1918, respectively); the latter, now regarded as an idiosyncratic American classic, was a detached view of his problematic relationship with the times. He did not have to deal with the irony of its receiving a posthumous Pulitzer Prize (1919). |
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