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Howard Mumford Jones

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Howard Mumford Jones (April 16, 1892 – May 11, 1980)[1] was an American intellectual historian, literary critic, journalist, poet, and professor of English at the University of Michigan and later at Harvard University.[2]

Jones was the book editor for The Boston Evening Transcript.[3]

Background

Howard Mumford Jones was born on April 16, 1892, in Saginaw, Michigan. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an undergraduate, winning oratorical contests there [4]

Career

Before moving to Harvard University, Jones was a member of the English faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1925 he approached president Harry Woodburn Chase, lamenting the absence of a bookstore in the town of Chapel Hill, and offered to open one in his office. This eventually became the Bull's Head Bookshop, now located in Student Stores.[5]

In February 1954, Jones gave the dedicatory address at the opening of an addition to the University of Wisconsin's Memorial Library, entitled "Books and the Independent Mind." The crux of his comments was contained in this comment: "While it is true that we in this nation remain free to be idiotic, it does not necessarily follow that we must be idiotic in order to be free!"[6]

Personal life and death

In 1927, Jones married the former Bessie Judith Zaban, of Atlanta, Georgia, in New York City,[7] and they remained married until his death.[2]

Howard Mumford Jones died age 88 on May 11, 1980, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after a brief illness.[2]

Awards

Legacy

The Howard Mumford Jones Professorship of American Studies at Harvard University is named in his honor.

Students of Jones at Harvard included cultural historian David Brion Davis and Betty Miller Unterberger, later the first woman professor at Texas A&M University and also the first woman president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Jones introduced Unterberger to the technical advantages of using a dictaphone while writing history. (Jones also urged her to marry her future husband Robert Unterberger, now a retired professor of geophysics at TAMU.) [9] Another, early student was communist lawyer John J. Abt.[10]

Quotations

  • "Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to."[11]

Works

Jones wrote scholarly articles as well as the following books:

Jones also wrote the introduction to Thomas Wentworth Higginson's book Army Life in a Black Regiment (Michigan State University Press, 1960).[12]

See also

References

  1. ^ Elizabeth A. Brennan, Elizabeth C. Clarage. Who's who of Pulitzer Prize winners ISBN 978-1-57356-111-2
  2. ^ a b c Kihss, Peter (13 May 1980). "Howard Mumford Jones, American Culture Historian". New York Times. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  3. ^ Wier, Albert Ernest (1943). Thesaurus of the Arts: Drama, Music, Radio, Painting, Screen, Television, Literature, Sculpture, Architecture, Ballet. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. p. 360. OCLC 675446.
  4. ^ La Crosse Tribune, 1914. http://access.newspaperarchive.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/us/wisconsin/la-crosse/la-crosse-tribune/1914/03-09?tag=auditor+treasurer+mismanagement+incompetence+failure+unfit&rtserp=tags/?plo=auditor-treasurer-mismanagement-incompetence-failure-unfit&pr=30&&ndt=by&py=1880&pey=1920
  5. ^ Bulls Head Bookshop, UNC
  6. ^ Jones, Howard Mumford. "Books and the Independent Mind: An Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Memorial Library of the University of Wisconsin." February 1, 1954. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1954, 22 pp.
  7. ^ "Jones-Zaban". The Raleigh News & Observer. Raleigh, NC. 20 June 1927. p. 6 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ 1965 Winners, Pulitzer.org
  9. ^ "Lee W. Formwalt, "From Scotland to India: A Conversation with American Historian Betty Unterberger," August 2005". oah.org. Archived from the original on March 6, 2012. Retrieved October 23, 2010.
  10. ^ Abt, John; Myerson, Michael (1993). Advocate and Activist: Memoirs of an American Communist Lawyer. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. p. 9. ISBN 9780252020308.
  11. ^ www.hannaharendtcenter.org
  12. ^ "Army Life in a Black Regiment". MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1960.
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