Bliss Perry (25
November 1860 – 13 February 1954), was an American literary critic, writer,
editor, and teacher. Perry was born in Williamstown,
Massachusetts to Arthur Latham Perry, a
prominent economist, and Mary Brown Perry. He was educated at Williams College, Williamstown, as well as the universities
of Berlin and Strasbourg.Perry
taught at Williams from 1886 until 1893. He then taught at Princeton University,
where he became acquainted with future US president Woodrow Wilson, Dean Andrew West, and former US
President Grover Cleveland, about
whom he wrote entertainingly in his autobiographical work, And Gladly
Teach. Perry taught at Harvard University between
1907 and 1930 and was the Harvard lecturer at the University of Paris from
1909 to 1910. From 1899 to 1909 he was the editor of The Atlantic Monthly.Perry
was awarded the Legion of Honour by
the French. He edited the works of Edmund Burke, Sir Walter Scott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. From
1905 until 1909 he was general editor of the Cambridge edition of
the major American poets. He wrote extensively, including monographs on Walt Whitman, John Greenleaf Whittier, Thomas Carlyle and Emerson. He was also a prolific writer
of novels, short fiction, essays, studies in poetry, and an autobiography.Perry
is famed in certain Vermont lore for "establishing" the "summer
colony" of Greensboro, Vermont. He
enjoyed its tranquil setting and its distance from the cares of the busy world
of the Atlantic Monthly and his professorships. Fly fishing
was one of his key hobbies, which led to the publication of "Fishing With
a Worm."Perry was the brother
of Dr. Lewis Perry, headmaster
of Phillips Exeter Academy from
1914 to 1946. In 1954 Perry died in Exeter, New Hampshire.