Call Number:

Ms. Coll. 649

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

0.4 linear feet (1 box)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Colonel George Harvey correspondence, 1906-1912, Ms. Coll. 649, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1906-1912 (inclusive)

Creator:

Harvey, George Brinton McClellan

Form:

Correspondence and Manuscripts, English -- 20th century

Abstract:

George Brinton McClellan Harvey was an American reporter and editor. The material of this collection comprises responses from a large group of luminaries who were invited to a seventieth birthday celebration for Henry Mills Alden in 1906 and/or to a seventieth-fifth birthday celebration for William Dean Howells in 1912.

George Brinton McClellan Harvey was an American journalist, editor, businessman, and diplomat. Born in 1864 in Peacham, Vermont, Harvey was educated at Peacham Academy. At age 18, Harvey became a reporter on the Springfield (Mass.) Republican and later on the New York World. From 1891 to 1894, he was managing editor of the World. He became involved in the construction of electric railways in New York and organized a syndicate in 1898 to acquire the rail lines in Havana, Cuba. His ventures in street railways made him wealthy and he used his money to purchase magazines, largely publishing about politics. a topic in which he was greatly interested and influential. In 1899, Harvey purchased the North American Review; in 1901, he purchased Harper's Weekly, which he edited until 1913; and in 1903, he purchased the Metropolitan Magazine. President Warren Harding appointed him as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipoteniary for the United Kingdom in 1921 and he served until 1923. Havey died following a heart attack in 1928.

The material of this collection documents only a tiny segment of Harvey's career in journalism. The collection comprises responses from a large group of luminaries who were invited to a seventieth birthday celebration for Henry Mills Alden in 1906 and/or to a seventieth-fifth birthday celebration for William Dean Howells in 1912.

Henry Mills Alden was an editor at Harper's Magazine for thirty-seven years. Invited guests to the Alden event included George Ade, Edward Bok, William Dean Howells, Edwin Markham, Mary Mears, and Owen Wister.

William Dean Howells was a author, editor, and literary critic, nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters" and was known as a champion of realism in literature. Invited guests to the Howells event include George Ade, Henry Mills Alden, Edward Bok, James B. Cabell, Winston Churchill, Archer M. and Helen Huntington, Will Irwin, Henry James, George Barr McCutcheon, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Edwin Markham, Jacob Riis, James Whitcomb Riley, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Edwin A. Robinson, William Howard Taft, Booth Tarkington, and William Winter.