author
George Frisbie Whicher
1889–1954
An Amherst College professor with a lifelong love of American literature, he wrote warmly and insightfully about writers including Emily Dickinson and Sarah Orne Jewett. His work helped bring overlooked literary figures back into clearer view for later readers.
1 Audiobook
The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood
by George Frisbie Whicher
About the author
Born in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, in 1889, George Frisbie Whicher studied at Amherst College and then at Columbia University, where he completed graduate work before beginning his teaching career. He returned to Amherst in 1915 and remained there for the rest of his professional life, serving for decades as a professor of English.
Whicher was a literary scholar, critic, and biographer whose books ranged across American and eighteenth-century literature. Among the works most often associated with him are This Was a Poet, a study of Emily Dickinson, and The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood. He also wrote on Sarah Orne Jewett and contributed to the wider study of American letters through essays, criticism, and teaching.
He died in 1954 after nearly four decades on the Amherst faculty. Remembered as a dedicated scholar and teacher, he belongs to a generation of academics who helped shape the serious study of American literature in colleges and libraries.