HENDRICK, George 1929-

PERSONAL: Born March 30, 1929, in Stephenville, TX; son of Hoyt (a rancher) and Bessie Lea (Sears) Hendrick; married Willene Lowery, January 23, 1955; children: one daughter. Education: Texas Christian University, B.A., 1948, M.A., 1950; University of Texas, Ph.D., 1954.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61810.

CAREER: Writer, educator, and college administrator. Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now Southwest Texas State University), San Marcos, TX, assistant professor of English, 1954–56; University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, member of English department faculty, 1956–60; Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, professor of American literature and culture, 1960–65, co-director of English seminar and director of Amerika-Institut; University of Illinois, Chicago, professor of English, 1965–67; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, professor of English, 1967–99, professor emeritus, 1999–, head of English department, 1971–76, associate dean of graduate college, 1967–71, special curator of university library, 1994–97. Visiting professor, University of Illinois, Chicago Undergraduate Division now University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, 1964–65.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, Midwest Modern Language Association, James Jones Society (president, 1991–92).

AWARDS, HONORS: Recipient of grants from American Council of Learned Societies, Ford Foundation, and National Endowment for the Humanities.

WRITINGS:

(With Donna Gerstenberger) Directory of Periodicals Publishing Articles in English and American Language and Literature, A. Swallow (Chicago, IL), 1959, fourth edition, 1974.

(Editor) 1785 Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Charles Wilkins, Scholars' Facsimiles, 1959.

(With Donna Gerstenberger) The American Novel: A Checklist of Twentieth Century Criticism, A. Swallow (Denver, CO), 1960.

Katherine Anne Porter, Twayne Publishers (New York, NY), 1965, revised edition with wife, Willene Hendrick, Twayne Publishers (Boston, MA), 1988.

Mazo de la Roche, Twayne Publishers (New York, NY), 1970.

A Checklist of American Literary Manuscripts in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, Japan, and New Zealand, Bull Publishing, 1972.

(With Lynn Altenbernd) The Sandburg Roots, University of Illinois Library Friends (Urbana-Champaign, IL), 1976.

Henry Salt, Humanitarian Reformer and Man of Letters, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1977.

(With J. A. Robbins and others) American Literary Manuscripts, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1977.

Remembrances of Concord and the Thoreaus: Letters of Horace Hosmer to Dr. S. A. Jones, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1977.

(Editor, with Fritz Oehlschlaeger) Toward the Making of Thoreau's Modern Reputation: Selected Correspondence of S. A. Jones, A. W. Hosmer, H. S. Salt, H. G. O. Blake and D. Ricketson, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1979.

(Editor, with Willene Hendrick) On the Illinois Frontier: Dr. Hiram Rutherford, 1840–1848, Southern Illinois University Press (Urbana, IL), 1981.

Thoreau amongst Friends and Philistines and Other Thoreauviana by Dr. Samuel Arthur Jones, Ohio University Press (Athens, OH), 1982.

(Editor, with Margaret Sandburg) Ever the Winds of Chance, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1983.

The Selected Letters of Mark Van Doren, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1987.

(With Willene Hendrick) Katherine Anne Porter, revised edition, Twayne Publishers, 1988.

(Editor and author of introduction), Carl Sandburg, Fables, Foibles, and Foobles, illustrated by Robert C. Harvey, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1988.

(Editor and author of introduction) Ham Jones, Ante-Bellum Southern Humorist: An Anthology, Archon (Hamden, CT), 1990.

(Compiler and author of foreword) Carl Sandburg, More Rootabagas, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky, Knopf (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor, with Willene Hendrick and Fritz Oehlschlaeger) Henry S. Salt, Life of Henry David Thoreau, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1993.

(Editor and author of introduction, with Willene Hendrick) Carl Sandberg, Billy Sunday and Other Poems, Harcourt Brace & Company (San Diego, CA), 1993.

(Editor, with Willene Hendrick) Carl Sandburg, Selected Poems, Harcourt Brace (San Diego, CA), 1996.

(Editor and author of introduction, with Willene Hendrick) Carl Sandburg, Poems for the People, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 1999.

(With Helen Howe and Don Sackrider) James Jones and the Handy Writers' Colony, Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale, IL), 2001.

(Editor, with Helen Howe and Don Sackrider) Writings from the Handy Colony, introduction by John Bowers, afterword by Judith Everson and J. Michael Lennon, Tales Press (Urbana, IL), 2001.

(With Willene Hendrick) The Creole Mutiny: A Tale of Revolt aboard a Slave Ship, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL, 2003.

(Editor and author of introduction, with Willene Hendrick) Fleeing for Freedom: Stories of the Underground Railroad, as Told by Levi Coffin and William Still, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 2004.

(With Willene Hendrick) Why Not Every Man?: African Americans and Civil Disobedience in the Quest for the Dream, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 2005.

Also author of introductions to books, including biographical introduction to To Reach Eternity: The Letters of James Jones, Random House, 1989; (coauthor) Life of Henry David Thoreau, University of Illinois Press, 1993; and (with Margaret Sandburg) Ever the Winds of Chance, by Carl Sandburg, University of Illinois Press, 1999.

WORK IN PROGRESS: By the Author of "Cousin Sally Dilliard," with Willene Hendrick; Homeopathy and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America; an edition of the letters of James Jones.

SIDELIGHTS: Writer, educator, and researcher George Hendrick is a career academic who has worked in the field of American literature and whose research interests have included American transcendentalism. A number of his books focus on the history of African Americans and their experiences with slavery, civil disobedience, and the quest for freedom. The Creole Mutiny: A Tale of Revolt aboard a Slave Ship, for one, tells the story of Madison Washington, an escaped slave in Canada who returned to Virginia to free his wife. Recaptured, he was placed on board the Creole, a domestic slave ship headed to New Orleans. In November 1841, Washington led the other 134 slaves aboard in a mutiny near Abaco in the Bahamas. He seized control of the ship and sailed it to the British port of Nassau. A bitter dispute between U.S. and British consuls ended in the British freeing all blacks aboard in accordance with their own emancipation laws. Ultimately, the British agreed to no more interference in cases where U.S. ships were forced into British ports, and insurers paid slave owners more than 110,000 dollars for the loss of their "property." Most of the Creole rebels settled in the Caribbean, but the later whereabouts and exploits of Washington are largely unknown. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the book "a concise account of a lesser-known but crucial moment in the history of slavery."

Fleeing for Freedom: Stories of the Underground Railroad, as Told by Levi Coffin and William Still, which Hendrick edited with his wife, Willene, offers a scholarly abridgement of two large collections of memoirs and recollections about the underground railroad: Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, published in 1880, and William Still's the Underground Railroad, published in 1872. Coffin, a Quaker, maintained a number of outposts for the underground railroad in Indiana and Ohio. He was a tireless supporter of the cause, and his book, consisting of voluminous diary entries made over his life, suggests that he was responsible for helping more than two thousand fugitives to freedom. Still, a self-educated son of ex-slaves, provided numerous fugitive slave narratives and related material from the underground railroad in his work. The Hendricks edit and condensed the work of the two abolitionists to create "a contemporary analysis of two valuable primary sources," according to Margaret Flanagan in Booklist. "Unadorned and straightforward, the tales are impressive in their manner and their message," commented Kliatt contributor Pat Moore.

Why Not Every Man?: African Americans and Civil Disobedience in the Quest for the Dream, which Hendrick also wrote with his wife, reviews the story of black resistance efforts from the days of slavery to the 1960s Civil Rights movement. The authors suggest that nonviolent civil disobedience was the most common method used by African Americans to work toward escaping their bondage. Methods such as boycotts of goods produced by slave labor, such as sugar and cotton, were among the early styles of protest. The authors also explore how the ideas of Henry David Thoreau influenced Gandhi and his satyagraha movement in India, and how ideas from that movement were later adopted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Even in the face of the increased presence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century, and the more recent racial violence characterized by the brutal murder of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, civil disobedience and nonviolence remain a preferred form of protest, the authors assert. Their "continued attention to the nonviolent aspect of the struggle is welcome," commented a Kirkus Reviews critic.

Hendrick once told CA: "I have concentrated on publishing, with appropriate introductions and annotations, unknown or little-known works by and about American writers—the letters and humorous articles by a pioneer Illinois physician, the unfinished volume of Sandburg's memoirs, the Thoreauvian works of the homeopathic physician Dr. S. A. Jones—and I have also been editing the letters of American writers. This work continues, often with collaborators, and I am presently editing the humorous writings of Hamilton C. Jones (author of "Cousin Sally Dilliard") and the letters of James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity and other novels. I am attempting to make available to the reading public some important documents concerning our literary and cultural heritage."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, January-February, 2005, R. Owen Williams, review of Fleeing for Freedom: Stories of the Underground Railroad, p. 25.

Booklist, July, 1996, Ray Olson, review of Selected Poems, p. 1797; April 1, 1999, Ray Olson, review of Poems for the People, p. 1379; February 15, 2003, Vernon Ford, review of The Creole Mutiny: A Tale of Revolt aboard a Slave Ship, p. 1038; December 15, 2003, Margaret Flanagan, review of Fleeing for Freedom, p. 722.

Journal of Southern History, May, 2004, Howard Jones, review of The Creole Mutiny, p. 427.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2003, review of The Creole Mutiny, p. 38; February 1, 2005, review of Why Not Every Man?: African Americans and Civil Disobedience in the Quest for the Dream, p. 165.

Kliatt, May, 2004, Ann Hart, review of The Creole Mutiny, p. 37; May, 2004, Pat Moore, review of Fleeing for Freedom, p. 38.

Library Journal, April 1, 2005, Thomas J. Davis, review of Why Not Every Man?, p. 108.

Progressive, July, 1994, Herbert Mitgang, review of Billy Sunday and Other Poems, p. 40.

Publishers Weekly, January 6, 2003, review of The Creole Mutiny, p. 47.