The Education of Henry Adams
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The Education of Henry Adams
By: Henry Adams
The son of a diplomat, the grandson and great-grandson of two American presidents, a man of extraordinary gifts and learning in his own right, Henry Adams recounts his life from his birth in 1838 and upbringing as a Boston Brahmin, through the Civil War, the nation's industrial expansion, and its emergence as a world power.
Title information
The Education of Henry Adams had been an important and influential text for a decade before Henry Adams was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in autobiography in 1918. The import of the text begins with its author, the weight of its influence with its first audience; its continued appreciation has as much to do with the first two factors as the fact that it was brilliantly constructed by a man of letters at the height of his powers. Descended from one of America’s most famous political families, Adams contributed a classic work of American historiography and one of the most famous autobiographies of American literature instead of making a great political contribution to the country. Adams does provide insight into the Adams family, a source of fascination not unlike the Kennedys, but he is curiously silent on two areas of his own life. Adams discusses his experience as private secretary to his father, minister to England during the American Civil War. However, he says almost nothing on his role as advisor and confidante to John Hay, secretary of state to President William McKinley and President Theodore Roosevelt, while the United States became a world power. The other deafening silence concerns the absence of the lessons he must have learned from his wife’s suicide. Adams’ release of one hundred self-published folios of The Education of Henry Adams to some of the most powerful people on earth—from writers to heads of state—guaranteed interest. Those who were not among the first one hundred went to extraordinary lengths to glean any information about the contents. These one hundred copies had a preface authored by Adams. The second text was released to the general public after Adams died. This edition contained a preface penned by Adams but signed by Henry Cabot Lodge in 1918.
Henry Adams
Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918; normally called Henry Adams) was an American journalist, historian, academic and novelist. He is best-known for his autobiographical book, The Education of Henry Adams. He was a member of the Adams political family.
In 1868, Henry Adams returned to the United States and settled down in Washington, D.C., where he started working as a journalist. Adams saw himself as a traditionalist longing for the democratic ideal of the 17th and 18th centuries. Accordingly, he was keen on exposing political corruption in his journalism.
According to Ken Burns PBS production of the American Civil War, Adams said, "I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously. It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world."
In 1870, Adams was appointed Professor of Medieval History at Harvard, a position he held until his early retirement in 1877 at 39. As an academic historian, Adams is considered to have been the first (in 1874–1876) to conduct historical seminar work in the United States. Included among his students were Henry Cabot Lodge, who worked closely with Adams as a graduate student.
On June 27, 1872, he and Clover Hooper were married in Boston, and spent their honeymoon in Europe. Upon their return, he went back to his position at Harvard and their home at 91 Marlborough Street, Boston, became a gathering place for a lively circle of intellectuals. In 1877, he and his wife moved to Washington, D.C., where their home on Lafayette Square, across from the White House, again became a dazzling and witty center of social life. He worked as a journalist and continued working as an historian.
