author

MacGregor Jenkins

1869–1940

Remembered for a warm, firsthand memoir of Emily Dickinson, this Amherst-born writer also moved easily between literary publishing, campus life, and light, humane essays about country living.

1 Audiobook

Bucolic Beatitudes

Bucolic Beatitudes

by MacGregor Jenkins

About the author

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1869, MacGregor Jenkins grew up with an unusually close connection to Emily Dickinson. Later accounts of his work describe him as a boyhood neighbor of the poet, and his late memoir Emily Dickinson: Friend and Neighbor is valued for that personal glimpse of Amherst and Dickinson's world.

Jenkins graduated from Williams College in 1890. Sources also place him in publishing with Houghton, Mifflin in Boston and connect him with Williams College in later years, reflecting a career that seems to have bridged books, education, and literary life.

He wrote both nonfiction and fiction, and some of his rural essays appeared under the pen name Rusticus. Works associated with him include Bucolic Beatitudes, The Reading Public, and Emily Dickinson: Friend and Neighbor. He died in 1940.