Уильям Лайон Фелпс: Жизнь и творчество американского ученого и публициста

Author, radio host and scholar from USA

William Lyon Phelps (January 2, 1865 New Haven, Connecticut – August 21, 1943 New Haven, Connecticut) was an American author, critic and scholar. He taught the first American university course on the modern novel. He had a radio show, wrote a daily syndicated newspaper column, lectured frequently, and published numerous books and articles.

Phelps' father Sylvanus Dryden Phelps was a Baptist minister, and the family had deep ancestral roots in Massachusetts Bay Colony. William, as a child, was a friend of Frank Hubbard, the son of Langdon Hubbard, a lumber merchant who founded Huron City, Michigan. Phelps earned a B. A. and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale in 1887, writing an honors thesis on the Idealism of George Berkeley. Phelps' wife, Annabel, inherited her family's estate and William christened it "The House of the Seven Gables,” after the Nathanial Hawthorne story. Her father had built the house in 1882 on a bluff overlooking Lake Huron. The couple was married on the estate on December 21, 1892 and they lived there part time from 1893 through 1933, when he retired, and full time through 1938. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1921 and the American Philosophical Society in 1927. Phelps taught at Yale for 41 years before retiring in 1933. From 1941 to 1943 he was the director of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.

Phelps often drew large audiences. He lectured on the Town Hall Lecture circuit nationwide. After his retirement from Yale, he continued to present public lectures, radio talks, and write a daily newspaper column about books and authors. He continued to give a series of Sunday sermons each summer and offer a 20 week lecture course in literature during the winter. He presented several college commencement addresses each year and served as a judge of the Pulitzer Prize for literature and on book club selection committees.

During his time as a Yale professor, Phelps invited a number of the Senior Class' notable students together in 1884 and founded The Pundits. They dined weekly at Mory's, a private club adjacent to the campus. The group regularly lampooned the campus with elaborate pranks. Among the notable members of the Pundits was composer Cole Porter. Phelps encouraged Alexander Smith Cochran to dedicate the Cochran family's extensive collection of Shakespearean folios and other rare books to endow a private club for the arts and humanities. This became the Elizabethan Club which is still active as of 2021. In 1938, Life magazine ran an article profiling Phelps' life. His wife Annabel died of a stroke in 1939 and William died in 1943. Phelps bequeathed the house to his niece Carolyn Hubbard Parcells Lucas. In 1951, a museum was opened in the home to house Phelps’ library and to focus on the history of Huron City. In 1964, the Pointe aux Barques Life Saving Station house was moved here. In 1987, Carolyn Lucas died, and the William Lyon Phelps Foundation took over the house and museum. The professor asked his students to discuss the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins' "sprung rhythm" technique. One young man handed in his exam reading, "Only God knows the answer to your question. Merry Christmas." Professor Phelps returned the paper after Christmas with the note, "Happy New Year. God gets an A—you get an F."