J. Donald Adams
Personal Information
Description
Born in New York in 1891, Adams earned a B.A. at Harvard in 1913. A period of teaching at the University of Washington was followed by newspaper work in both New England and the Northwestern. Mr. Adams came to the New York Sun in 1920, and after four years went over to the Times, where he was editor of the Sunday Book Review from 1925 to 1943. In recent years he has been a contributing editor to the Review, writing the well known column, “Speaking of Books,” which appeared on page two. He is the author of The Shape of Books to Come (1944), and the editor of The Treasure Chest: An Anthology of Contemplative Prose (1945). He made his home in New York City and summered at Martha’s Vineyard. American Editor, writer. Chancellor American Academy Poets. With United States Army, 1917-1919. Member Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association (delegate Edinburgh Congress, 1934, Buenos Aires, 1936), Poetry Society American (president 1945-1946), Pilgrims Society, Authors Guild Authors' League American, Society Silurians, Explorers Club, Century Club, Harvard Club, Dutch Treat Club. M C.
Books
Copey of Harvard
This portrait of the great teacher, catalyst and stimulus, is a warm and capacious tribute to the man who was not only a legend in his lifetime but an enduring influence- as the testimony of the many men whose writing he sparked and shaped in English 2 affirms over and over again in the pages here. For his private ""alumni association"" provides many of the letters, reminiscences, engaging small stories which are used now to demonstrate his wit, his often brutal sarcasms, and then his tremendous warmth toward all she young men he taught, to whom he communicated his enthusiasm and true critical judgment rather than the scholarship with which he was often impatient. Maine born, educated at arvard where (as he would be in later years) he was outdistanced by Kittredge, Copey returned to Harvard as an instructor. His lectures, his readings, his writing classes made him the outstanding figure there, and the best loved. He had no personal life outside of those he taught- and there were those who were put off by him. Adams, whose admiration and affection is clear, also includes dissenting opinions, and his idiosyncrasies, his railties, his sometimes suspect showmanship, his dread of death and his desire for immorality are all part of the character so well, so fondly and so fully remembered here. He may still find a captive audience-- among those who would like to remember Harvard's Golden go and to share in Copeland's legacy to many writers and publishers prominent today.
The shape of books to come
A view of who Adams thought would survive in the literary marketplace. Deals with the past quarter century of American fiction & attempts to show the direction in which it is now heading.