Edgar L. Wakeman
Biography of Edgar L. Wakeman and an advertisement for his book, Tales of Ten Travelers.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1902
Your TR Source
Authors, American--Biography
A Life in Letters
In his review of Theodore Roosevelt: A Literary Life, Joseph R. Ornig highlights the remarkable number of books written by and about Theodore Roosevelt, and he finds that the latest entry, a literary biography penned by Thomas Bailey and Katherine Joslin, fills a niche and reminds readers of Roosevelt’s impressive intellectual range. Ornig reviews the few other works that have addressed this topic, including his own, and he provides an overview of the careers of Bailey and Joslin. Ornig concludes his essay by reviewing the wide range of works produced by Roosevelt in the course of his writing career.
Four illustrations supplement the text, including a photograph of Roosevelt and the front cover of Theodore Roosevelt: A Literary Life.
Collection
Book review
Robert Wexelblatt praises Philip McFarland for his even-handed approach in his dual biography Mark Twain and the Colonel: Samuel L. Clemens, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Arrival of a New Century. Wexelblatt notes that the disagreements between the writer and the politician will interest most readers, and he highlights Twain’s anti-imperialism as the foremost of these issues. Wexelblatt commends McFarland for explaining the views of Twain, Roosevelt, and their contemporaries in the context of their time. He notes that McFarland also covers the similarities between “the two most famous and celebrated Americans,” and he credits McFarland for his research and his lively prose.
Photographs of Twain and Roosevelt, and the front cover illustration of Mark Twain and the Colonel, accompany the review.
Collection
Edith Wharton: Her writing, her life, and her hero
In his review of Hermione Lee’s biography of Edith Wharton, Harry N. Lembeck describes in detail her home in Lenox, Massachusetts, known as The Mount. Lembeck also discusses her relationships with her friend Walter Berry, her lover William Morton Fullerton, and fellow writer Henry James. Lembeck highlights her relationship with Theodore Roosevelt which centered on their mutual love of books and reading, their dislike of Woodrow Wilson, and their desire to see the United States abandon its neutrality and enter the Great War in Europe. Lembeck also highlights some aspects of Wharton’s writing that had been previously ignored.
Seven photographs supplement the text, including five of The Mount. One shows Wharton with two of Roosevelt’s sons, Quentin Roosevelt and Archibald B. Roosevelt. A text box with the mission statement of the Theodore Roosevelt Association also appears in the article.
Collection
Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway: A Study in Two Strenuous Lives
Neil Edward Stubbs examines the influence that Theodore Roosevelt had on the novelist Ernest Hemingway. Stubbs looks at Hemingway’s childhood and notes how the culture that he was raised in the in the first decade of the twentieth century was dominated by Roosevelt. Stubbs explores Hemingway’s love of hunting, his desire to meld the strenuous life with the intellectual life, and his quest for military service as evidence of his desire to emulate Roosevelt. Stubbs speculates that Hemingway may have become disillusioned with Roosevelt after his service in World War I, but he notes that Hemingway pursued military service in the 1930s and 1940s.
Three photographs populate the essay, including one each of Roosevelt and Hemingway with lions they killed while on safari in Africa.
“He loved the soaring spirit of man”: The life and work of Hermann Hagedorn
John A. Gable describes in detail the life and work of Hermann Hagedorn, historian, biographer, and long-time Director of the Roosevelt Memorial Association and its successor, the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Gable covers Hagedorn’s life as a child of German immigrants in Brooklyn, New York, his education and teaching at Harvard, and his early career as a writer and poet. He notes Hagedorn’s difficulties as a German-American during World War I and the start of his friendship with Theodore Roosevelt that would define his career. Gable traces Hagedorn’s leadership of the Roosevelt Memorial Association over nearly four decades, discusses his many publications on Roosevelt, and looks at his other writings, including a number of biographies and many works of poetry.
Two photographs accompany this article. One is a formal portrait of Hagedorn and the other shows Hagedorn with President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the dedication of Sagamore Hill in June 1953.