author
Hutton Webster
1875–1955
A scholar of society and history, he wrote widely used textbooks that helped generations of students make sense of the ancient world and the long story of civilization. His work also ranged into anthropology and sociology, with a lasting interest in custom, ritual, and social institutions.
2 Audiobooks
Early European History
by Hutton Webster
Rest days : A study in early law and morality
by Hutton Webster
About the author
Born in Malone, New York, in 1875, Hutton Webster was an American sociologist, economist, anthropologist, and historian whose teaching career was closely tied to Stanford University and the University of Nebraska. He earned his A.B. and M.A. in economics at Stanford, completed a Ph.D. at Harvard in 1904, and later returned to Stanford as a lecturer in sociology after years of teaching at Williams College and Nebraska.
Webster wrote across an unusually broad range of subjects. Alongside studies such as Primitive Secret Societies, Rest Days, and Taboo: A Sociological Study, he became especially well known for clear, wide-ranging history textbooks including Ancient History and World History. His books aimed to organize huge stretches of human experience into readable form, which made them useful in classrooms for many years.
He died in California in 1955. Today, he is remembered as a versatile early twentieth-century scholar whose work connected social science and history, bringing big cultural and historical patterns to a general audience as well as to students.