Horace Reynolds papers (Ms.Reynolds)

Biographical note

Horace Mason Reynolds was born October 2, 1896 in New York, New York and died October 27, 1965 in Belmont, Massachusetts.

A writer and professor of English, Horace Mason Reynolds (Horace Reynolds) received his education from Harvard: A.B. in 1919 and an A.M. in 1923. After teaching at Brown University from 1923 until 1929 (Instructor, 1923-26; Asst. Prof., English, 1926-1929) he taught for two years at the College of William and Mary, then returned to Harvard (1931-1934) where he held the post-graduate Willard Scholarship from 1932-1934. In the 1950's he held teaching posts at Emerson College and Tufts University.

He served in the Army in 1918 in World War I and in the Army Air Force from 1942 to 1943 in World War II. After his military service, he became a free lance writer contributing regularly to the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor as a reviewer and essayist until shortly before his death.

In 1927, The Brown Alumni Magazine notes that Reynolds was embarking on a tour of Ireland to include meeting with the important intellectual figures of the day and "assisting in making a collection of the best new Irish books for the John Hay Library." His discovery upon meeting W.B. Yeats that Yeats had written for the Providence Journal in the late 1880s led to his writing several articles in the Providence Journal in 1928 about Yeats and the other notable Irish literary figures (including Katherine Tynan, John Todhunter, Rose Kavanagh, Alfred P. Graves and others) who contributed to the Journal in the 1880s and early 1890s. These articles were subsequently gathered together and published as A Providence Episode in the Irish Literary Renaissance (Providence: Study Hill Club, 1929). Reynolds collected the articles and poems Yeats published in the Journal along with others from the Boston Pilot and published them as Letters to the New Island (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934). His interest in the Irish literary renaissance led to his publication of an edition of Oliver St. John Gogerty's Selected Poems (New York: Macmillan, 1933; published in the United Kingdom in 1938 as Others to adorn) as well as numerous articles and reviews on Irish literary figures in the New York Times.

His long list of reviews and essays reveal not only a strong interest in Irish literary figures including Joyce, Synge, and O'Casey, but also American authors such as Faulkner, Thoreau, and Emerson. His interests also encompassed American folklore and American folk music where he reviewed some of the important early publications of the Lomaxes and Woody Guthrie. During his time at Brown University his efforts on behalf of the John Hay Library in Ireland, perhaps led him to suggest somewhat immodestly in A Providence Episode that: "There is … a much more complete collection of Anglo-Irish books in the John Hay Library in Providence than is to be found in the combined libraries of Trinity College and the National University of Dublin."