GAMALIEL BRADFORD

Half a century ago, a shy Harvard Freshman, the sickly descendant of one of New England's proudest families, was forced, through shattered health, to abandon his college career. But the youth of nineteen possessed a knack for writing, and despite his overwhelming drawback of poor health determined to educate himself and apply his talent in examining the lives of the great. Retiring to a quiet country town be began a career which has won for the name Gamaliel Bradford international recognition as one of the biographers of his age.

A discriminating scholar, Gamaliel Bradford is noted chiefly for his development of "psychography," as he calls it, a method of biography which discarding, as far as possible, chronology and external facts seeks only to reveal the innermost character of the subject. His admiration of Saint-Beuve was shown early in his widely acclaimed works on Emerson, Lee, and Pepys; ever since that time, with amazing versatility, he has continued to lay bare the souls of obscure and misunderstood characters. Despite justified charges of superficiality, his popularity attracted imitators, but the peculiar intimacy of his style defied duplication; his creation has remained definitely his own. As the rehabilitators of "damaged souls" he has won a unique position among biographers and an unusual hold on his readers.

But the quiet, unpretentious citizen of Wellesley is perhaps even more admirable. His hospitality and generosity to struggling young authors was outstanding. At home he was frequently host to small groups of distinguished friends who enjoyed leisurely hours of pleasant reading. His courageous struggle against fragile health gives proof of praiseworthy perseverance; his occasional attempts at fiction and poetry reveal an attractively human weakness. A refined and keen judgment coupled with a dignified scholarly career mark Gamaliel Bradford as an unusually attractive character, well worthy of the high esteem he enjoyed as a biographer and as a man.