Edmund Maybank Fuller (3 March 1914 – 29 January 2001) was an American
educator
A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching.
''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...
, editor,
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while other ...
,
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...
, and
literary critic
A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...
.
Career
Fuller directed plays at
Longwood Gardens, taught playwriting at the
New School for Social Research
The New School for Social Research (NSSR), previously known as The University in Exile and The New School University, is a graduate-level educational division of The New School in New York City, United States. NSSR enrolls more than 1,000 stud ...
, and wrote a history of drama for students at the secondary-school level. His
biography
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curri ...
of
Milton (1944) is enlivened by novelistic techniques which he justified, in an "Author's Note", by appealing to the example of other biographers from
Plutarch
Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...
on down. This led in 1946 to the most important of his novels, ''A Star Pointed North'', a historical novel based on the life of
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...
which includes as characters
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an Abolitionism in the United States, American abolitionist, journalist, and reformism (historical), social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper ''The ...
,
John Brown,
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, us ...
,
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
, and his successor as president,
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808July 31, 1875) was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. The 16th vice president, he assumed the presidency following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a South ...
. Other novels followed: ''Brothers Divided'' (1951), ''The Corridor'' (1963), and ''Flight'' (1970). In the Douglass novel Fuller is said to have "bridged an aching gap in American history." As a historian and biographer he was attracted to off-the-beaten-track topics. In ''Journey into the Self'' (1950) he wove together the surviving papers of
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and ...
's brother,
Leo Stein, in a biographical narrative, and two years later the
Vermont State Board of Education published his ''Vermont: A History of the Green Mountain State''. ''Tinkers and Genius: The Story of the Yankee Inventors'' followed in 1955; ''God in the White House: The Faiths of American Presidents'', co-authored with David E. Green, in 1968; and ''
Prudence Crandall: An Incident of Racism in Nineteenth-Century Connecticut'' in 1971.
Early in his career Fuller served for eight years as editor-in-chief at Crown Publishers, where he compiled an anthology of the law in literature and large collections of quotations, anecdotes, epigrams, and, in collaboration with Hiram Haydn, book digests. In 1948 he left the metropolis for 264 acres near Shoreham, Vermont, where he hoped to sustain his family through farming combined with free-lance consulting with authors and publishers. That effort lasted only five years, during nt together another Crown anthology, ''Mutiny!'' drawing on historical accounts ranging in date from
Livy
Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding i ...
to
Chiang Kai-shek and including his own brief piece, "
Nat Turner
Nat Turner (October 2, 1800 – November 11, 1831) was an enslaved Black carpenter and preacher who led a four-day rebellion of both enslaved and free Black people in Southampton County, Virginia in August 1831.
Nat Turner's Rebellion res ...
the Prophet."
In 1953 he accepted a faculty appointment at the
Kent School in Connecticut, where he would teach English and theology until he left to join Dr. John O. Patterson, the former Headmaster of Kent who had founded
St. Stephen's School in Rome, Italy in 1964. While at Kent he co-edited (with
Oak Ridge physicist
William G. Pollard) in two volumes the proceedings of ecumenical symposia held at Kent in 1955 (for the school's
fiftieth anniversary) and 1960 on "the Christian idea of education." An ongoing association with Pollard equipped him to review the boo
''Science Ponders Religion''(1960)
Harlow Shapley
Harlow Shapley (November 2, 1885 – October 20, 1972) was an American astronomer, who served as head of the Harvard College Observatory from 1921–1952, and political activist during the latter New Deal and Fair Deal.
Shapley used Cepheid var ...
ed., an account of eight summers of the
Star Island Institute on Religion in an Age of Science Conferences, Fuller comments on
Henry Margenau
Henry Margenau (April 30, 1901 – February 8, 1997) was a German-American physicist and philosopher of science.
Biography Early life
Born in Bielefeld, Germany, Margenau obtained his bachelor's degree from Midland Lutheran College, Nebraska befor ...
,
Ian G. Barbour,
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky (; ; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a Russian-born American geneticist and evolutionary biologist. He was a central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the modern ...
,
Kirtley F. Mather,
Edwin C. Kemble,
Ralph W. Burhoe, and others, but says that in order to provide a better balance of viewpoints another volume is needed containing work by such thinkers as Pollard,
Charles A. Coulson, or
Charles E. Raven. "From the physical sciences to psychiatry," he writes, "a new ''rapprochement'' is developing between science and religion" that some of the authors in the volume under review "fail to understand."
From 1955 through 1968 he made selections from, or abridged reading versions of, long classics that were staples in the curriculum: novels by
Tolstoy
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using pre-reform Russian orthography. ; ), usually referr ...
,
Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influenti ...
,
Ross Lockridge,
Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the great ...
,
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland (; 29 January 1866 – 30 December 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and Mysticism, mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary pro ...
, and
Thackeray in addition to
Johnson's ''Lives of the Poets'',
Bulfinch's Mythology, and works by Plutarch,
Boswell, and
Vasari
Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer who is best known for his work '' Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'', considered the ide ...
—thirteen volumes in all. Meanwhile, over the same period, slightly extended, he served as general editor for Harcourt, Brace & World's "Adventures in Good Books" textbook series, editing six of the fifteen volumes himself; edited two essay anthologies for other publishers; edited Laurel paperbacks of selected works by
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...
,
Balzac, and
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Fau ...
, as well as seven annotated plays by
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
; and edited two or three other textbooks, including a selection from the poetry of
Longfellow.
Fuller returned to Connecticut in 1966 and became chairman of the English department at
South Kent School from 1971-1978. The bulk of Fuller's work as a critic consists of book reviews in the ''
Saturday Review'' and major New York newspapers. He was book review editor of ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'' for 32 years. In 1969 and 1973 he served on the selection jury for the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during ...
. He also published several critical essays and two more books of literary criticism, companion surveys of the contemporary literary scene springing from his deep familiarity as a reviewer. The first focuses on aspects of mid-century taste that he found deplorable; the second calls for greater appreciation of selected writers whose work, though then unfashionable, represents what to Fuller are enduring values. ''Man in Modern Fiction'' (1958) is aptly subtitled "some minority opinions on contemporary American writing." As an adherent of traditional
Christian humanism
Christian humanism refers to two intellectual movements: the anti-paganizing wing of sixteenth century Renaissance humanism (the scholarly movement and worldview that recovered the classical humanities and ideals of citizenship and human dignity; ...
Fuller decried the emphasis on human depravity, the denial of freedom and moral responsibility, and the embrace of meaninglessness that he found characteristic of such novelists as
Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren (born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham; March 28, 1909 – May 9, 1981) was an American writer. His 1949 novel '' The Man with the Golden Arm'' won the National Book Award and was adapted as the 1955 film of the same name.
Algren articulate ...
,
James Jones,
Norman Mailer
Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journalist and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least ...
, and
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian ...
, representing what he later would call "the post-
Chatterley deluge." The eight
National Book Award
The National Book Awards (NBA) are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. ...
choices to date reflected, he believed, this prevailing taste. But he saw encouraging signs of a counter-trend, an emergence of good writers "in the great tradition of man as a rational, free, responsible, purposeful—even though fallible and imperfect—creature of God," and in ''Books with Men behind Them'' (1962) (whose title derives from a ''mot'' of
Emerson's) he named more than a dozen such writers and singled out seven for extensive analysis:
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, for the novel ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' and for the plays ''Our Town'' and ''The Skin of Our Teeth'', and a U. ...
,
Gladys Schmitt,
Alan Paton
Alan Stewart Paton (11 January 1903 – 12 April 1988) was a South African writer and anti-apartheid activist. His works include the novels '' Cry, the Beloved Country'' (1948), '' Too Late the Phalarope'' (1953), and the short story ''The Wa ...
,
C. P. Snow,
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer, literary scholar and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Magdalen College, Oxford (1925–1954), and Magdalen ...
,
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson ...
, and
Charles Williams. On two of the
Inklings
The Inklings were an informal literature, literary discussion group associated with J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusia ...
Fuller would have more to say a few years later.
He issued a selection of
John Donne
John Donne ( ; 1571 or 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under Royal Patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's, D ...
's sermons, edited and abridged, believing that "much in Donne's thought and expression speaks with extraordinary directness and aptness to our own condition today." ''Affirmations of God and Man: Writings for Modern Dialogue'' grew out of many conversations about religion that Fuller had with students at his own school and on the university lecture circuit. It consists of nearly 250 extracts from a wide array of authors, ancient to contemporary and quite varied in religious orientation, arranged thematically to spark discussion on issues central to theological inquiry. Finally, after retiring and moving to
Chapel Hill, N. C., where his friend from ''The Wall Street Journal'' days,
Vermont C. Royster, was teaching journalism, Fuller assembled about a hundred of Royster's prize-winning columns that he thought deserved continued attention beyond what newspapers generally afford.
[''The Essential Royster : A Vermont Royster Reader'', Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1985.]
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fuller, Edmund
2001 deaths
20th-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
American literary critics
1914 births
20th-century American male writers