George Parsons Lathrop

File:George Parsons Lathrop 1891.jpg

George Parsons Lathrop, ca. 1891

George Parsons Lathrop (1851–1898) was an American poet and novelist.

Life

George was born August 25, 1851, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father was physician George Alfred Lathrop and his mother was Frances Maria (Smith) Lathrop, and his brother was Francis Lathrop.

George was educated in New York City and Dresden, Germany, when he returned to New York, and decided on a literary career. Going to England on a visit he was married in London, September 11, 1871, to Rose Hawthorne, the second daughter and youngest child of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In 1875 he became associate editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and remained in that position two years, leaving it to edit the Boston Courier in 1879. He worked on several books for Roberts Brothers, including Afterglow (1877) and Somebody Else (1878), and he edited A Masque of Poets as part of their "No Name" series.

In 1879 George purchased Rose's former house, called the "The Wayside", in Concord, Massachusetts, and resided there until 1883, when he moved to New York City. His contributions to the periodical and daily press were varied and voluminous. In 1883 he founded the American Copyright League, which assisted in securing an international copyright law.

George was also one of the founders of the Catholic Summer School of America. He and Rose were received into the Roman Catholic Church in New York in March 1891. Among his published works are: Rose and Roof-tree (1875), poems; A Study of Hawthorne (1876); Afterglow (1876), a novel; Somebody Else (1878); An Echo of Passion (1882); Spanish Vistas (1883), a work on travel; Newport (1884), a novel; In the Distance (1885); Dreams and Days (1892), poems; A Story of Courage (1894), centenary history of the Visitation Convent, Georgetown, D.C. He edited (1883) a complete, and the standard, edition of Rose's works, and adapted The Scarlet Letter for Walter Damrosch's opera of that title, which was produced at New York in 1896.

George died on April 19, 1898, in New York. After his death Rose, as Mother Mary Alphonsa, organized a community of Dominican tertiaries, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who took charge of two cancer hospitals at New York.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 

External links

• Works by George Parsons Lathrop at Project Gutenberg