Bliss Perry

Biography

Bliss Perry’s career as an American literary critic, writer, and lecturer began to gain steam in the early 1900s, taking him from universities in Berlin and Strasburg to Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Paris, where the French government awarded him the Legion of Honor. He also served as the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, a prestigious literary magazine, for a full decade, and edited the works of many major poets, such as Edmund Burke, Sir Walter Scott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He wrote in a variety of genres himself, including short fiction, essays, novels, and even an autobiography. Bliss Perry ultimately became more well-known for his editing and his monographs on other writers than for his own writing, but his awareness of the literary context of his age through his career make his writings valuable from a critical perspective.