Francis H. Underwood

American editor and writer

Francis Henry Underwood (January 12, 1825 – August 7, 1894) was an American editor and writer. He was the founder and first associate editor of The Atlantic Monthly in 1857 while still working as a publisher's assistant.

Biography

Underwood was born on January 12, 1825, in Enfield, Massachusetts, the son of Phoebe (Hall) and Roswell Underwood.^[1]

Underwood worked in Kentucky from 1845 to 1850, but his hatred of slavery caused him to quit the state. He became an ardent supporter of the Free Soil Party. Originally, he planned to launch a Free-soil magazine in 1853, but the idea did not come to fruition until The Atlantic Monthly in 1857.^[2]

Underwood traveled to Britain in August 1885 on SS Cephalonia. He arrived in Liverpool and then traveled by railway to Glasgow.^[3]

In 1885, Underwood was appointed American Consul at Glasgow in Scotland.^[4] In 1893, he was Consul for Leith.^[5] He is noted as being a member of Edinburgh's "Pen and Pencil Club".^[6]

He lived at 35 Mansionhouse Road in the Grange, Edinburgh.^[7]

He died in Edinburgh on August 7, 1894.^[8]^[9]

Works

Cloud Pictures, a novel
Hand-books of English Literature
Builders of American Literature
Lord of Himself
Man Proposes
Dr. Gray's Quest
Biographies of Lowell, Longfellow, and Whittier

References

^ Thoreau, Henry David (November 13, 2018). The Correspondence of Henry D. Thoreau: Volume 2: 1849-1856. ISBN 9780691170589.
^ John Wilson Townsend. Kentucky in American Letters, 1784-1912. 1976 "Francis Henry Underwood, 'the editor who was never the editor' of The Atlantic Monthly, though he was indeed the projector and first associate editor of that famous magazine, was born at Enfield, Massachusetts, January 12, 1825, the son of Roswell Underwood. ... Underwood's intense hatred of slavery caused him to quit Kentucky, in 1850, after having lived for six years in this State, and to return. ... He enlisted in the Free-soil movement with heart and soul."
^ Edinburgh Evening News (newspaper) 18 August 1885
^ Edinburgh Evening News (newspaper). 10 August 1885
^ Kestenbaum, Lawrence. "Index to Politicians: Underwood". The Political Graveyard. Archived from the original on December 27, 2023.
^ Edinburgh Evening News (newspaper) 22 November 1893
^ Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1894-5
^ London Evening Standard. 8 August 1894
^ Dundee Advertiser (newspaper). 8 August 1894

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.