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Henry Harland

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Henry Harland
Born March 1, 1861
Norwich, Connecticut
Died December 20, 1905 (aged 44)
Sanremo, Italy
Occupations Novelist, editor
Spouse Aline Herminie Merriam
Writing career
Pen name Sidney Luska
Signature

Henry Harland (March 1, 1861 – December 20, 1905) was an American novelist and editor.

Biography

Harland was born in Norwich, Connecticut,[1] in 1861, the son of Fourierist Thomas Harland, who had been a one-time roommate of editor and author Edmund Clarence Stedman. He was raised in New York and, after the Civil War, the Harlands lived in a German Jewish section of the city.[2]

Harland attended the City College of New York and briefly Harvard Divinity School. In May 1884, he married Aline Herminie Merriam, who shared his artistic interests.[3] His literary career falls into two distinct sections. During the first of these, writing under the pseudonym Sidney Luska, he produced a series of highly sensational novels, written with little regard to literary quality. His novels written under this persona in the 1880s became the first popularly-read books to feature the American Jewish experience, which Harland both celebrated and criticized.[2] Harland's depictions were met with wide criticism from the Jewish community. One review in the Philadelphia-based Jewish Exponent said one of his books was "grossly inartistic" and expressed "condescension" and "vulgar assumption towards Jews".[4] Kaufmann Kohler in The Menorah complained that, in Harland's novels "the Jews, as a class, lack refinement".[4]

But in 1889 Harland moved to London and fell under the influence of the Aesthetic movement. He began writing under his own name and, in 1894, became the founding editor of The Yellow Book. The short story collections of this new period, A Latin-Quarter Courtship (1889), Mademoiselle Miss (1893), Grey Roses (1895), and Comedies and Errors (1898), were praised by critics but had little general popularity. He finally achieved a wide readership with The Cardinal's Snuff-box (1900), which was followed by The Lady Paramount (1901) and My Friend Prospero (1903). Hamlin Garland met him around this time and noted that he had affected a fake English accent. Garland recalled, "his 'extraoinary' English accent was comical. He spoke quite like the caricatured Englishman of our comedy stage. He is completely expatriated now and unpleasantly aggressive in his defense of England and English ways."[5]

Harland's last novel, The Royal End (1909), was incomplete when he died. His wife finished it according to his notes.[6] He died in 1905 at Sanremo, Italy, after a prolonged period of tuberculosis.

After his death, Henry James wrote positively about both Harland and The Yellow Book, though he had previously disparaged both.[7]

Works

  • As It Was Written: A Jewish Musician's Story (1885) by Sidney Luska
  • Mrs Peixada (1886) by Sidney Luska
  • The Yoke Of The Thorah (1887) by Sidney Luska
  • My Uncle Florimond (1888) by Sidney Luska (Henry Harland)
  • A Latin-Quarter Courtship, and Other Stories (1889) by Sidney Luska (Henry Harland)
  • Grandison Mather (1889) by Sidney Luska (Henry Harland)
  • Two Women or One? From the Mss. of Dr. Leonard Benary (1890) by Henry Harland (Sidney Luska)
  • Two Voices (1890) by Henry Harland (Sidney Luska) Contents: “Dies Irae”, “De Profundis”.
  • Fantasy (1890) by Matilde Serao, translated by Henry Harland and Paul Sylvester
  • Mea Culpa: A Woman’s Last Word (1891)
  • Mademoiselle Miss, and Other Stories (1893)
  • The Yellow Book, An Illustrated Quarterly (1894–1897) Harland was literary editor for the entire run of 13 volumes, and contributed a number of (mostly) pseudonymous pieces.
  • Grey Roses (1895)
  • Comedies and Errors (1898)
  • The Cardinal's Snuff-Box (1900)
  • The Lady Paramount (1902)
  • My Friend Prospero (1903)
  • The Royal End: A Romance (1909) Completed by Harland's widow, Aline.
  • The Light Sovereign (1917) with Hubert Crackanthorpe

Notes

  • The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 6th Edition. Edited by James D. Hart, revised by Phillip W. Leininger. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. p. 271. ISBN 0-19-506548-4.
  • Foote, Stephanie. "Ethnic Plotting: Henry Harland and the Jewish Writer." American Literature. March 2003 (75:1): 119–140.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Novelist, b. of New England parentage, at St. Petersburg, 1 Mar., 1861; d. at San Remo, 20 Dec., 1905. His father, Thomas Harland, of Norwich, Conn., was a New York lawyer of great ability. Henry attended the College of the City of New York. In 1881 he went to Harvard, where he studied theology for a year. The next year was spent in Italy, chiefly in the best social and artistic circles of Rome. Returning a Catholic at heart, he did not join the Church out of regard for his wife. Due at nine at his desk in the Surrogate's Court of New York, he rose at four a.m. and worked till eight on his first novel "As It Was Written" (New York, 1885). "Mrs. Peixada" and "The Yoke of the Thorah" followed. They form a sort of Jewish trilogy. His interest in the race grew out of his friendship for a young Hebrew. These and seven other successful novels were signed "Sidney Luska", a name and books which Harland, now a fastidious stylist, wished to sink into oblivion. Going to Paris in 1887, Harland and his wife soon settled in London. Their experiences he parodied in a play, "The Light Sovereign" (1889). Henry Harland for years wrote only short stories of exquisite workmanship for various reviews. Some of them are over-redolent of the Latin-Quarter: they have been collected in "Mademoiselle Miss" (London, 1893), "Grey Roses" (London, 1895), and "Comedies and Errors" (London, 1898).

The centre of a coterie of littérateurs, Harland projected a quarterly for them, the black and white work being done by Aubrey Beardsley. Appearing in Jan., 1894, "The Yellow Book" made Harland and Beardsley the lions of the hour, and the vogue continued till Harland's failing health stopped the publication in 1897. In this year Harland and his wife were received into the Church. In 1898 appeared "The Cardinal's Snuff Box", a delightfully buoyant novel of Italian life. It is so pervaded with the beauty of the Catholic Faith (as are all of Harland's writings from this on) that it has made converts. In 1902 was published his masterpiece, "The Lady Paramount", likened by John Oliver Hobbes to a Shakesperian comedy. In 1904 came "My Friend Prospero", in the same charming vein. "The Royal End" (1909) was incomplete when Harland died. His wife finished it according to his notes. Despite ill health, Harland, always whimsically joyous, was, still more than Beardsley, a "boy who never grew up". At thirty his physician gave him two years to live, but he prolonged them to fourteen most fruitful ones. In sight of the home built by the family at Norwich, Conn., before 1776, Henry Harland lies buried near his people, but in consecrated ground, with a Roman cross at his head.

GLASTONBURY (MRS. HENRY HARLAND), The Life and Works of Henry Harland in Irish Monthly (Dublin, April, 1911), this, the only accurate account of Harland, is reprinted from The Redwood (Santa Clara, California); BURKE, Novels of Mr. Henry Harland in Cath. World (New York, April, 1903); JAMES, The Story Teller at Large in The Fortnightly Rev., LXIX (London); Athenaeum (London, 30 Dec., 1905); The Times (London, 22 Dec., 1905); The Bookman, XXII (New York, 1905-6), XXIX (1909); The Lamp, XXVI (New York); Current Literature, XL.

References

  1. Back to citation Harland often claimed to have been born in Saint Petersburg, which is reflected in multiple contemporary reference works such as Who's Who in America, Harland, Henry in Who's Who in America (1901-1902 edition); via archive.org but later scholars have discounted this. Henry Harland, an American Forerunner of Proust, by Justin O'Brien; in Modern Language Notes; Vol. 54, No. 6 (Jun., 1939), pp. 420-428
  2. Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 Harap, Louis. The Image of the Jew in American Literature: From Early Republic to Mass Immigration (Second Edition). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003: 455. ISBN 0-8156-2991-5
  3. Back to citation Barbara Schmidt (2012). "Henry Harland (1861–1905) Archived 2018-06-02 at the Wayback Machine. The Yellow Nineties Online
  4. Back to citation occurrence 4.0 Back to citation occurrence 4.1 Harap, Louis. The Image of the Jew in American Literature: From Early Republic to Mass Immigration (Second Edition). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003: 465. ISBN 0-8156-2991-5
  5. Back to citation Harap, Louis. The Image of the Jew in American Literature: From Early Republic to Mass Immigration (Second Edition). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003: 566. ISBN 0-8156-2991-5
  6. Back to citation Regina Randolph Jenkins (1914). "Henry Harland". The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 16 (Index). New York: The Encyclopedia Press
  7. Back to citation Parry, Albert. Garrets and Pretenders: Bohemian Life in America from Poe to Kerouac. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2013 (originally published 1833): 127. ISBN 978-0-486-48605-5
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