Shakespeare, Horace Howard Furness Hamlet cm1322

Oriental Rug Review/Asian Trade is pleased to offer an original article from Century Magazine: "The Great Shakespearean Critic, Horace Howard Furness," by Talcott Williams This is an original article from Century Magazine, Vol. LXXXV, No. 1, Nov., 1912, 6 pp. (loose), 6 1/2" x 9 1/2"

About the Subject and/or Author

Horace Howard Furness (Nov. 2, 1833 – Aug. 13, 1912) was the most important American Shakespearean scholar of the 19th century. As editor of the "New Variorum" editions of Shakespeare -- also called the "Furness Variorum" -- he collected in a single source 300 years of references, antecedent works, influences and commentaries. He devoted more than 40 years to the series, completing the annotation of 15 plays. With his wife, Helen Kate Furness (1837-1883), he authored A Concordance to Shakespeare's Poems (1874). His son, Horace Howard Furness, Jr. (1865-1930), joined as co-editor of the Variorum's later volumes, and continued the project after the father's death, annotating 5 additional plays. Horace was the son of the Unitarian minister and abolitionist William Henry Furness (1802-1896), and brother of the architect Frank Furness (1839-1912). He graduated from Harvard in 1854, studied in Germany, and was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar in 1859, but his growing deafness interfered with the practice of law. In 1860, he joined the Shakspere [sic] Society of Philadelphia, an amateur study group that took its scholarship seriously. As he later wrote:

"Every member had a copy of the Variorum of 1821, which we fondly believed had gathered under each play all Shakespearian lore worth preserving down to that date. What had been added since that year was scattered in many different editions, and in numberless volumes dispersed over the whole domain of literature. To gather these stray items of criticism was real toil, real but necessary if we did not wish our labour over the text to be in vain."

Furness was a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, a long-serving trustee (1880-1904), and chairman of the building committee for its library. Designed by his brother Frank, Horace selected the Shakepearean quotes for the 1891 building's leaded glass windows. (Following a 6-year restoration, it was rededicated in 1991, as the Fisher Fine Arts Library.) He was the advisor for doctoral student Emily Jordan Folger who, with her husband Henry Clay Folger, would co-found the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. Horace Jr. donated his father's Shakespearean collection to the University of Pennsylvania, whose Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library honors both father and son. An 1890 review in Blackwood's Magazine may indicate the esteem in which British critics held Furness's scholarship: "In what is called 'The Variorum Edition of Shakespeare,' America has the honor of having produced the very best and most complete edition, so far as it has gone, of our great national poet." The Modern Language Association of America continues the "New Variorum" project with the goal of definitively annotating all 38 of Shakespeare's plays. Horace Howard Furness High School in South Philadelphia is named for him. The Helen Kate Furness Free Library in Wallingford, PA is built on the former grounds of his country house, "Lindenshade," on land donated by Furness.

Talcott Williams, (1849–1928), was an American journalist and educator, born at Abeih, Turkey, the son of Congregational missionaries. He graduated from Amherst in 1873. Afterwards. he was employed at the New York World, and as a correspondent for the New York Sun and the San Francisco Chronicle. He was an editorial writer for the Springfield (Mass.) Republican in 1879-81. He worked as an editor of the Philadelphia Press for 30 years, until 1912, when he became director of the new School of Journalism at Columbia University, built and endowed by Joseph Pulitzer. With F. M. Colby, he was editor of the New International Encyclopedia. In 1913, he served as president of the American Conference of Teachers of Journalism. Williams was a good friend of artist Thomas Eakins. Eakins included a depiction of Williams in The Swimming Hole.

During the last half of the 19th century Harper's Weekly, Scribner's and Century Magazine Published many great articles on current and recent events in history, both national and international, the Arts, World Travel and much more. Though photography was developed (forgive the pun) during the 1840s the preferred medium for magazine illustration was the great art of engraving, until the 1890s when photographs began to replace engravings.

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