MR. ROBERT HERRICK, the author of “The Gospel of Freedom,” “The Web of Life,” and “The Real World,” was born in Cambridge, Mass., April 26, 1868. His father was a lawyer, practising in Boston. His people on both sides were of New England stock, the Herricks running back in New England to 1632, and the Emerys, Mannings, Hales, and Peabodys, with whom among others his genealogy is connected, having much the same history. Mr. Herrick was educated at the Cambridge public schools, and at Harvard University, graduating in 1890. His freshman year and part of his sophomore year were spent in travelling in the West Indies, Mexico, California, Alaska, and other regions, in company with his classmate, Philip Stanley Abbot. While in college Mr. Herrick paid special attention to English studies, attending courses of lectures delivered by the late Professor Child, Professor James, and Professor Barrett Wendell, among others.
For a year he was one of the editors of the Harvard Advocate, and contributed several stories to that magazine. Later he was editor of the Harvard Monthly—the purely literary magazine of the University,—contributing frequently to its pages. One of his fellow-editors was Norman Hapgood, the author of “Abraham Lincoln: the Man of the People,” and “George Washington.”
After graduation Mr. Herrick began to teach English at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under Professor George R. Carpenter (now of Columbia University), and continued to correct themes and to give an occasional course in literature until 1893, when he resigned his position in Boston to accept an instructorship in English at the University of Chicago. In 1895 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Rhetoric in the University, and he has since taught chiefly Rhetoric and English Composition.
The summer of 1892 he spent in England and on the Continent. In 1895 he went abroad for fifteen months, for rest and literary work, living in Paris and Florence during most of the period. While in Europe he wrote the first draft of “The Man Who Wins,” which was published two years later; also the first form of “The Gospel of Freedom,” and various short stories, which were first published in the magazines and afterward reprinted in “Literary Love Letters and Other Stories,” and in “Love’s Dilemmas.” In addition to his writing in the line of fiction, Mr. Herrick has done a great deal of work on more or less professional topics. Magazine articles about methods of teaching rhetoric, introductions and notes for school editions of classics, one or two text-books on rhetoric,—these items give an idea of the sort of work which has occupied Mr. Herrick’s attention apart from fiction. He is one of the few modern American writers who have the courage and the strength to paint life exactly as they see it,—in its joy, its beauty, its sombreness, and its sorrow alike,—without making it seem happier or nearer the ideal than it is.