Want fewer ads?

William Roscoe Thayer (1859–1923) was an American author and editor. Thayer was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 16, 1859. He graduated from Harvard in 1881 and was editor of the Harvard Graduates' Magazine from 1892 until 1915. Thayer was a classmate of Theodore Roosevelt. In 1914, he was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters and he received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Brown and other universities. Thayer served as a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers from 1913 until 1919. He was president of the American Historical Association 1918-1919. His verse includes:

• The Confessiones of Hermes (1884)
• Hesper, an American Drama (1888)
• Poems, New and Old (1894)

His prose writing includes, amongst other works:

• The Influence of Emerson (1886)
• An Historical Sketch of Harvard University, From its Foundation to May, 1890 (1890)
• The Dawn of Italian Independence (1893)
• The Best Elizabethan Plays (1895)
• History and Customs of Harvard University (1898)
• Throne-Makers (1899)
• A Short History of Venice (1905)
• Longfellow: Our National Poet (1907)
• Life and Times of Cavour (two volumes, 1911)
• Life and Letters of John Hay (1915)
• Germany vs. Civilization (1916)
• The Letters of John Holmes to James Russell Lowell and Others (1917)
• The Collapse of Superman (1918)
• Democracy: Discipline: Peace (1919)
• Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography (1919 Grosset & Dunlap)
• George Washington (1922)

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "William Roscoe Thayer", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0