Thomas Herbert Johnson

Thomas Herbert Johnson (April 27, 1902 – January 3, 1985) was an American scholar, teacher, editor, and bibliographer specializing in American literature.

His notable contributions include the rediscovery of the Puritan poet Edward Taylor (–1729), whose complete poems ''Poetical Works'' he edited and published in 1939; his co-editorship of ''Literary History of the United States'' (1948, 3 vols.), for which he compiled the third volume, the ''Bibliography''; and his editions of the writings of Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) comprising the ''Poems'' (1955, 3 vols.) and the ''Letters'' (1958, 3 vols.). In 1955, he also published ''Emily Dickinson: An Interpretative Biography.'' Before Johnson's work, complete editions of Dickinson's writing were unavailable. He also authored ''The Oxford Companion to American History'' (1966).

Early life

During his first semester as a freshman, he failed three of his five courses. Given a second chance, he took ten courses in the academic year of 1920–21, earning four C’s, three D’s, and three E’s. Johnson wrote to President Ernest Martin Hopkins requesting another chance. Hopkins responded that, while finding Johnson's letter compelling, he would not deviate from the school's policy. Johnson wrote to Hopkins, “My greatest, my earliest ambition has been swept away from me because of my own carelessness... only I am to blame.” Johnson began teaching at a rural school in Readsboro at age 19.

In the autumn of 1922, with the help of President Hopkins, he entered Williams College as a freshman. His academic record remained undistinguished until his senior year. By the time Johnson graduated from Williams in 1926, he had been elected to the Gargoyle honor society and served as president of the college's theatrical group, Cap and Bells.

In 1926–27, Johnson joined as a teacher in an around–the–world academic cruise for which Howes of Williams was one of three deans. Known as the Floating University, it included over fifty faculty members and four hundred and fifty students (one hundred and twenty of them women). The project combined formal education with travel, integrating elite colleges and state schools from across the country, and it was covered nearly weekly by the ''New York Times''. Johnson’s letters, thirty-four in all, were addressed to his mother but were also intended for his father, his younger brother Edward (“Ned”), and his older sister Ruth.

Early career

Thomas Johnson completed his M.A. degree at Harvard University in 1929 and earned a Ph.D. in 1934. He wrote on colonial literature in ''Jonathan Edwards: Representative Selections'', edited with Clarence Faust of the University of Chicago, followed by ''The Puritans'', authored with Perry Miller of Harvard, in 1938. According to Kermit Vanderbilt in his ''American Literature and the Academy'', Johnson "made an impact on American literature studies" in 1939, introducing "the scholarly world to the verses of Edward Taylor, four hundred pages of manuscripts that had lain over two centuries in Yale University archives.”Vanderbilt, Kermit, ''American Literature and the Academy: The Roots, Growth, and Maturity of a Profession'', University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA., 1986, p. 443. Johnson’s scholarship was released as ''The Poetical Works of Edward Taylor'' in 1939.

He then contributed to ''Literary History of the United States'', published in three volumes by Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan in 1948, a collaboration with Robert E. Spiller of the University of Pennsylvania, Willard Thorp of Princeton University, Princeton and Henry Seidel Canby, founding editor of the ''Saturday Review (U.S. magazine), Saturday Review of Literature''. Johnson compiled the third volume, the ''Bibliography''. Vanderbilt wrote that although “Thomas Johnson was not the foremost bibliographer on the American literature scene when Spiller and Thorp drove down from Princeton to nearby Lawrenceville School in 1942 and persuaded him to join the editorial board in that capacity," Johnson "had more than modest credentials and was, in addition, the foremost scholar of New England literature among all the contributors. He was, in fact, a New Englander. . . .”

The publication of the ''Literary History'' helped establish that America had its own literature, with writers who were distinctly American and wrote on American themes. Subsequently, American professors were invited to European universities to establish courses in American Literature.

Later career

Johnson was invited by Harvard University Press to work on a new edition of Emily Dickinson. Franklin, in his introduction to the 1998 Variorum edition, described Johnson’s 1955 edition as "a landmark in Dickinson studies [...] an outstanding achievement [...] essential to Dickinson scholarship for over forty years."

In 1966, his last major work, ''The Oxford Companion to American History'', was published. Alexander R. Butler, in his review in ''The New Republic'', wrote that "the book invites browsing" and that "Johnson has set an exceptionally high standard for his possible successors. [...] He has the ability to suggest with a few words a wild variety of historical viewpoints so that the biographies and articles, short though they are, do not emphasize the facts themselves but the interpretations of the facts."

Johnson retired in 1967. That year, ''The Lawrentian'' wrote of him, "But he is first and foremost a teacher [...] Those of us who are fortunate to know him well all know of the pleasure he takes in his writing and his research. [...] but we know better his pleasure in his classes, his talk of boys who do well [...] his concern for the less-gifted, his encyclopedic knowledge of the language and literature he loves to teach." Vanderbilt characterized Johnson as having "clearly thrived on the alternation between prep-school instruction and the intense concentration demanded of textual and bibliographical scholarship."Vanderbilt, p. 444.

External links

Finding aid for Johnson's papers at the Vermont Historical Society

Collection of Thomas H. Johnson Material at the Lawrenceville School

Emily Dickinson: An Interpretive Biography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Thomas Herbert
1902 births
1985 deaths
Williams College alumni
Harvard University alumni