Rollo Walter Brown

Teacher, author, and editor, Bliss Perry was beloved by the loyal legion who had studied under him at Williams, Princeton. and Harvard; by the many who had heard his peripatetic lectures; and by those who in quiet cherished his boohs. For this Atlantic Portrait of our serenth editor, we turn to ROLLO WALTERBROWN, a sensitive and knowing recorder of the golden age in the Harvard Yard. His biography of Dean Briggs and his profiles of the great teachers he worked under at Harvard — including George Pierce Baker, Copey, Kittredge, and President Eliot— mark him as one of the ablest biographers in New England.

ROLLO WALTER BROWN was born in southeastern Ohio, in the mining region which he has written about in his novels, As a boy he worked on a hill farm, in a clay mine, and occasionally in a coal mine. He studied law. but preferred literature and the contemporary scene. For twenty-five years he has been a busy free-lance author. He has the American gift of inviting confidence, and in his biographical volumes. Dean Briggs, Lonely Americans, and Harvard Yard in the Golden Age, he has drawn illuminating portraits of some of the big elders of our day.

The most eminent Shakespearean of his day, George Lyman Kittredge ruled the English Department as he ruled his classes at Harvard, with an iron hand and cold blue eyes which could spark when the occasion arose. Never a Ph.D. himself, he did more to train and temper the steel of Ph.D.’s than any other educator in the East. His fire, his challenge, and his encouragement will not soon be forgotten. We have called on ROLLO WALTER BROWN, one of his students, for this picture of ”Kitty" in action.

That college students could he taught to write and produce for the stage seemed absurd to Broadway and the professional theatre when George Pierce Baker was developing his “47 Workshop” in Cambridge. His teaching, his wise encouragement, guided to early success the talents of Eugene O’Neill, Edward Sheldon, Philip Barry, Sidney Howard, Donald Oenslager, S. N. Behrman, and George Abbott, to name a few. We have called on ROLLO WALTER BROWN, one of his students, for this picture of G.P.B. in action.