Horace Howard Furness

Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox person Horace Howard Furness (November 2, 1833 – August 13, 1912) was an American Shakespearean scholar of the 19th century.

Life and career

Horace Furness was the son of the Unitarian minister and abolitionist William Henry Furness (1802–1896), and brother of the architect Frank Furness (1839–1912). He graduated from Harvard University in 1854, embarked on a journey to Europe with Atherton Blight, and then studied in Germany.<ref>Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies, Volume 1, p. 311.</ref> After returning to the United States, he was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar in 1858,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> but his growing deafness interfered with the practice of law.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1860, he joined the Shakspere Society of Philadelphia, an amateur study group that took its scholarship seriously. As he later wrote: Template:Blockquote

As editor of the "New Variorum" editions of Shakespeare—also called the "Furness Variorum"—he collected in a single source 300 years of references, antecedent works, influences and commentaries.<ref>Jean Jules Jusserand, "Horace Howard Furness," With Americans of Past and Present Days (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916), pp. 322-323.</ref> He devoted more than forty years to the series, completing the annotation of sixteen plays.<ref>Jacob I. Kobrick, Furness-Bullitt Family Papers (Collection 1903), Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 2.(PDF)</ref> His son, Horace Howard Furness, Jr. (1865–1930), joined as co-editor of the Variorum's later volumes, and continued the project after the father's death, annotating three additional plays and revising two others.<ref>John Woolf Jordan, A History of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and Its People, Volume 2 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1914), pp. 670-671.[2]</ref>

He was a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, a long-serving trustee (1880–1904), and chairman of the building committee for its library. Designed by his brother Frank, Horace selected the Shakepearean quotes for the 1891 building's leaded glass windows.<ref>Following a 6-year restoration, Frank Furness's University of Pennsylvania Library was rededicated in 1991, on the occasion of its centennial, as the Fisher Fine Arts Library.</ref> He was the advisor for doctoral student Emily Jordan Folger who, with her husband Henry Clay Folger, would co-found the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.<ref>Joseph Quincy Adams and Paul Cret, The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington (Amherst College, 1933).</ref>

An 1890 review in Blackwood's Magazine may indicate the esteem in which British critics held Furness's scholarship: Template:Blockquote

He died on August 13, 1912, and was interred at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

New Variorum

File:HHFurness.jpg

Horace Howard Furness in his brick library at "Lindenshade," c. 1910<ref>Historic American Buildings Survey PA.23-WALF.2A-5, Library of Congress.[1]</ref>

File:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914) p333.jpg

"Dr. Furness's House, West Washington Square, just before it was torn down." (1914), Joseph Pennell.

Volumes edited by Horace Howard Furness

These volumes went through a number of reprints: the external links connect to the last online edition available.

• Romeo and Juliet (published 1871)
• Macbeth (1873)
• Hamlet, vol. 1 (1877)
• Hamlet, vol. 2 (1877)
• King Lear (1880)
• Othello (1886)
• Merchant of Venice (1888)
• As You Like It (1891, copyright 1890)
• The Tempest (1892)
• A Midsommer Nights Dreame (1895)
• The Winter's Tale (1898)
• Twelfth Night (1901)
• Much Ado About Nothing (1904)
• Love's Labors Lost (1904)
• Anthony and Cleopatra (1907)
• Richard III (1908)
• Cymbeline (1913) (published posthumously)

Volumes edited by H. H. Furness, Jr.

• Julius Caesar (Google books preview only) (1913)<ref>Template:Cite web (Online version of the full text)</ref>
• Macbeth (revised) (1903, 2nd ed. 1915)
• Merchant of Venice (revised) (1916)
• King John (1919)
• Coriolanus (1928)

The Modern Language Association of America continues the "New Variorum" project with the goal of definitively annotating all 38 of Shakespeare's plays.<ref>Shakespeare Variorum Handbook: A Manual of Editorial Practice.</ref>

Other works

• F. R. (1903). Philadelphia: privately printed. (A memorial of brother-in-law Fairman Rogers, signed H. H. F.)
• Template:Cite book Volume 1 · Volume 2
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Records of a lifelong friendship, 1807-1882: Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Henry Furness (1910), edited by H. H. F. (Horace Howard Furness). Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin

Honors

Furness was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society on April 16, 1880.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> He was the recipient of honorary degrees from Harvard University, University of Halle, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and University of Cambridge.<ref>Horace Howard Furness from Historical Society of Pennsylvania.</ref> He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1905.<ref>Deceased Members Template:Webarchive from American Academy of Arts and Letters.</ref>

Personal

File:Furness Helen Kate, 1880.jpg

Helen Kate Furness, (Template:Circa 1880)

In 1860 Furness married Helen Kate Rogers (1837–1883), heir to an ironmaking fortune and sister of University of Pennsylvania instructor Fairman Rogers. She compiled a concordance to Shakespeare's poems, published in 1874.<ref>"Mrs. Horace Howard Furness" (1874). A concordance to Shakespeare's poems. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott.</ref> They had four children:Template:Sfn

• Walter Rogers Furness (1861–February 7, 1914), an architect, who in 1896 became a partner in the firm of his uncle, Frank Furness. He built Furness Cottage at the Jekyll Island Club, Georgia, where his family vacationed from 1889 to 1895. He was permanently blinded in one eye in 1898, after a ball hit him during a game of racquets. From then on his life became worse and worse, descending into raging alcoholism. His wife, Helen Key Bullitt, died at age 47 in January 1914, and he died a month later at age 53, following a heart attack.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Horace Howard Furness Jr. (1865–1930), who continued his father's work on the New Variorum project. Author of a play, The Gloss of Youth : an imaginary episode in the lives of William Shakespeare and John Fletcher (1920).
• William Henry Furness III, (1866-1920), an explorer and ethnologist. One of the University of Pennsylvania medical students depicted in Thomas Eakins's painting The Agnew Clinic (1889).<ref>Wm. H. Furness III is the student at the top center of the painting, leaning sideways to get a better look.File:Thomas Eakins, The Agnew Clinic 1889.jpg</ref> Undertook anthropological expeditions to the South Pacific with Hiram M. Hiller, Jr. and Alfred C. Harrison, Jr., and wrote books and articles about Borneo and Polynesia. Died unmarried.
• Caroline Augusta Furness (1873-1909), also an ethnologist, she married University of Pennsylvania instructor Horace Jayne, and died from a heart attack at age 35 in 1909. Their children were Kate Furness Jayne and Horace H. F. Jayne, an art historian and museum director.

Horace and Kate Furness inherited her family's Philadelphia city house, at the SW corner of Locust Street & West Washington Square. Frank Furness altered the house in 1873, and designed the 1909 office building that replaced it.<ref>700 Locust Street, from Philadelphia Architects and Buildings.</ref> He also designed their country house, "Lindenshade" (Template:Circa, demolished 1940) and its many expansions, including the 1903 fireproof brick library.

Legacy

• Horace Howard Furness High School in South Philadelphia is named for him.
• Horace Jr. donated his father's Shakespearean collection to the University of Pennsylvania, whose Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library honors both father and son.<ref>Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library</ref>
• William Henry Furness III donated the land for the Helen Kate Furness Free Library in Wallingford, Pennsylvania,<ref>Helen Kate Furness Free Library</ref> built in 1916 on the former grounds of his parents' country house, "Lindenshade."

• "Lindenshade" (built c. 1873, demolished 1940), Wallingford, Pennsylvania, designed by Frank Furness
  "Lindenshade" (built c. 1873, demolished 1940), Wallingford, Pennsylvania, designed by Frank Furness
• "Lindenshade," circa 1888
  "Lindenshade," circa 1888
• Brick library at "Lindenshade" (1903), in 2017
  Brick library at "Lindenshade" (1903), in 2017
• The University of Pennsylvania Library (1891), now the Fisher Fine Arts Library
  The University of Pennsylvania Library (1891), now the Fisher Fine Arts Library
• Leaded glass fanlight over the main entrance to the University of Pennsylvania Library
  Leaded glass fanlight over the main entrance to the University of Pennsylvania Library
• Horace Howard Furness High School in South Philadelphia
  Horace Howard Furness High School in South Philadelphia
• Helen Kate Furness Free Library (1916), Providence Road & Furness Lane, Wallingford, PA
  Helen Kate Furness Free Library (1916), Providence Road & Furness Lane, Wallingford, PA
• Horace Howard Furness tombstone in Laurel Hill Cemetery
  Horace Howard Furness tombstone in Laurel Hill Cemetery

Further reading

• Chapman, John Jay (1915). Memories and Milestones. New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, pp 45–60.
• Gibson, James M. The Philadelphia Shakespeare Story: Horace Howard Furness and the New Variorum Shakespeare (New York: AMS Press, 1990)
• Jusserand, J. J. (1917). With Americans of Past and Present Days. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, pp. 319–332.
• Repplier, Agnes, "Horace Howard Furness," The Atlantic Monthly, November 1912.
• Williams, Talcott, "Appreciations of Horace Howard Furness: Our Great Shakespere Critic", The Century Magazine, November 1912.

External links

• Template:Cite EB1911
• The Horace Howard Furness collection on the Great Central Fair, containing Furness' papers and ephemera from the U.S. Sanitary Commission's Great Central Fair in 1864, are available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
• The Furness Library and the papers of the Furness family are located at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania.