Horace Howard Furness (November 2, 1833 – August 13, 1912) was an American

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 ...

an scholar of the 19th century.

Life and career

Horace Furness was the son of the Unitarian minister and abolitionist William Henry Furness (1802–1896), and brother of the architect

Frank Furness Frank Heyling Furness (November 12, 1839 – June 27, 1912) was an American architect of the Victorian era. He designed more than 600 buildings, most in the Philadelphia area, and is remembered for his diverse, muscular, often inordinately scaled ...

(1839–1912). He graduated from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1854, embarked on a journey to Europe with Atherton Blight, and then studied in Germany. After returning to the United States, he was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar in 1858, but his growing deafness interfered with the practice of law. In 1860, he joined the Shakspere Society of Philadelphia, an amateur study group that took its scholarship seriously. As he later wrote: As editor of the "New Variorum" editions of Shakespeare—also called the "Furness Variorum"—he collected in a single source 300 years of references, antecedent works, influences and commentaries. He devoted more than forty years to the series, completing the annotation of sixteen plays. His son, Horace Howard Furness, Jr. (1865–1930), joined as co-editor of the Variorum's later volumes, and continued the project after the father's death, annotating three additional plays and revising two others. He was a lecturer at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, a long-serving trustee (1880–1904), and chairman of the building committee for its library. Designed by his brother Frank, Horace selected the Shakepearean quotes for the 1891 building's leaded glass windows. He was the advisor for doctoral student Emily Jordan Folger who, with her husband Henry Clay Folger, would co-found the

Folger Shakespeare Library The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materia ...

in Washington, DC. An 1890 review in '' Blackwood's Magazine'' may indicate the esteem in which British critics held Furness's scholarship: He died on August 13, 1912, and was interred at

Laurel Hill Cemetery Laurel Hill Cemetery, also called Laurel Hill East to distinguish it from the affiliated West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, Bala Cynwyd, is a historic rural cemetery in the East Falls, Philadelphia, East Falls neighborhood ...

in Philadelphia.

New Variorum

Volumes edited by Horace Howard Furness

These volumes went through a number of reprints: the external links connect to the last online edition available.
''Romeo and Juliet''
(published 1871)
''Macbeth''
(1873)
''Hamlet'', vol. 1
(1877)
''Hamlet'', vol. 2
(1877)
''King Lear''
(1880)
''Othello''
(1886)
''Merchant of Venice''
(1888)
''As You Like It''
(1891, copyright 1890)
''The Tempest''
(1892)
''A Midsommer Nights Dreame''
(1895)
''The Winter's Tale''
(1898)
''Twelfth Night''
(1901)
''Much Ado About Nothing''
(1904)
''Love's Labors Lost''
(1904)
''Anthony and Cleopatra''
(1907)
''Richard III''
(1908)
''Cymbeline''
(1913) (published posthumously)

Volumes edited by H. H. Furness, Jr.

''Julius Caesar''
(Google books preview only) (1913)
''Macbeth''
(revised) (1903, 2nd ed. 1915) *''Merchant of Venice'' (revised) (1916)
''King John''
(1919)
''Coriolanus''
(1928) The Modern Language Association of America continues the "New Variorum" project with the goal of definitively annotating all 38 of Shakespeare's plays.

Other works

''F. R.''
(1903). Philadelphia: privately printed. (A memorial of brother-in-law Fairman Rogers, signed H. H. F.) * &nbs
Volume 1
�
Volume 2
* *
''Records of a lifelong friendship, 1807-1882: Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Henry Furness''
(1910), edited by H. H. F. (Horace Howard Furness). Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin

Honors

Furness was elected to membership in the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

on April 16, 1880. He was the recipient of honorary degrees from Harvard University,

University of Halle Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (), also referred to as MLU, is a public research university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg. It is the largest and oldest university in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. MLU offers German and i ...

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, and

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

. He was elected a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...

in 1905.

Personal

In 1860 Furness married Helen Kate Rogers (1837–1883), heir to an ironmaking fortune and sister of University of Pennsylvania instructor Fairman Rogers. She compiled a concordance to Shakespeare's poems, published in 1874. They had four children: * Walter Rogers Furness (1861–February 7, 1914), an architect, who in 1896 became a partner in the firm of his uncle,

. He built Furness Cottage at the

Jekyll Island Club The Jekyll Island Club was a private club on Jekyll Island, on Georgia's Atlantic coast. It was founded in 1886 when members of an incorporated hunting and recreational club purchased the island for $125,000 (about $3.1 million in 2017) from Jo ...

, Georgia, where his family vacationed from 1889 to 1895. He was permanently blinded in one eye in 1898, after a ball hit him during a game of

racquets Rackets or racquets is an indoor list of racket sports, racket sport played in the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada. It is infrequently called "hard rackets" to distinguish it from the related sport of squash (sport), squash (also cal ...

. From then on his life became worse and worse, descending into raging alcoholism. His wife, Helen Key Bullitt, died at age 47 in January 1914, and he died a month later at age 53, following a heart attack. * Horace Howard Furness Jr. (1865–1930), who continued his father's work on the New Variorum project. Author of a play
''The Gloss of Youth : an imaginary episode in the lives of William Shakespeare and John Fletcher''
(1920). * William Henry Furness III, (1866-1920), an explorer and ethnologist. One of the University of Pennsylvania medical students depicted in

Thomas Eakins Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (; July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American Realism (visual arts), realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artist ...

's painting The Agnew Clinic (1889). Undertook anthropological expeditions to the South Pacific with Hiram M. Hiller, Jr. and Alfred C. Harrison, Jr., and wrote books and articles about

Borneo Borneo () is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda ...

and

Polynesia Polynesia ( , ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in ...

. Died unmarried. * Caroline Augusta Furness (1873-1909), also an ethnologist, she married University of Pennsylvania instructor Horace Jayne, and died from a heart attack at age 35 in 1909. Their children were Kate Furness Jayne and Horace H. F. Jayne, an art historian and museum director. Horace and Kate Furness inherited her family's Philadelphia city house, at the SW corner of Locust Street & West Washington Square. Frank Furness altered the house in 1873, and designed the 1909 office building that replaced it. He also designed their country house, " Lindenshade" (, demolished 1940) and its many expansions, including the 1903 fireproof brick library.

Legacy

* Horace Howard Furness High School in South Philadelphia is named for him. *Horace Jr. donated his father's Shakespearean collection to the University of Pennsylvania, whose Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library honors both father and son. *William Henry Furness III donated the land for the Helen Kate Furness Free Library in Wallingford, Pennsylvania,Helen Kate Furness Free Library
/ref> built in 1916 on the former grounds of his parents' country house, "Lindenshade." File:Lindenshade circa 1873.jpg, "Lindenshade" (built c. 1873, demolished 1940), Wallingford, Pennsylvania, designed by

File:Lindenshade Philadelphia Suburban Homes 1889.jpg, "Lindenshade," circa 1888 File:HH Furness Library Lindenshade 2.jpg, Brick library at "Lindenshade" (1903), in 2017 Image:FisherLibrary.JPG, The University of Pennsylvania Library (1891), now the Fisher Fine Arts Library File:Fisher Fine Arts Library - IMG 6615.JPG, Leaded glass fanlight over the main entrance to the University of Pennsylvania Library File:Furness School Philly.JPG, Horace Howard Furness High School in South Philadelphia File:HK Furness Library.JPG, Helen Kate Furness Free Library (1916), Providence Road & Furness Lane, Wallingford, PA File:Horace Howard Furness, Horace and Catherine Furness Jayne tombstone.jpg, Horace Howard Furness tombstone in Laurel Hill Cemetery

References

External links

* * Th
Horace Howard Furness collection on the Great Central Fair
containing Furness' papers and ephemera from the U.S. Sanitary Commission's Great Central Fair in 1864, are available for research use at the

Historical Society of Pennsylvania The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a historic research facility headquartered on Locust Street in Center City Philadelphia. It is a repository for millions of historic items ranging across rare books, scholarly monographs, family chron ...

. * Th
Furness Library
and th
papers of the Furness family
are located at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania. {{DEFAULTSORT:Furness, Horace Howard 1833 births 1912 deaths 19th-century American lawyers 19th-century American male writers 20th-century American male writers American literary critics American deaf people Burials at Laurel Hill Cemetery (Philadelphia) Furness family Harvard University alumni Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Members of the American Philosophical Society Pennsylvania lawyers People from Delaware County, Pennsylvania Shakespearean scholars University of Pennsylvania faculty Writers from Philadelphia Deaf lawyers American lawyers with disabilities