Charles Eliot Norton

Charles Eliot Norton 1827-1908, American scholar and teacher, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1846. As professor of the history of art at Harvard (1875-98) and as a man of letters he had a stimulating influence on his time. He edited (1864-68), with James Russell Lowell , the North American Review and was a founder (1865) of the Nation. Of his several scholarly works, the most notable were his Italian studies and his prose translation (3 vol., 1891-92) of Dante.

Bibliography: See his letters (1913); biography by L. Dowling (2008); study by K. Vanderbilt (1959).

Norton, Charles Eliot (1827–1908), born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was professor of fine arts at Harvard (1873–98) and an intellectual leader of great influence. His aim was, in his own words, to arouse in his countrymen ‘the sense of connection with the past and gratitude for the efforts and labours of other nations and former generations’. He was a frequent contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, joint editor of the North American Review (1864–8), and founder and co-editor of The Nation (1865).

Norton, Charles Eliot (1827–1908), son of Andrews Norton, is best known as professor of the history of fine art at Harvard (1873–98), although his broad range of scholarship, lofty and catholic taste, and great personal charm extended his influence far beyond the confines of the university. He was a frequent contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, co‐editor of The North American Review (1864–68), a founder and co‐editor of The Nation (1865), and the author of books as widely varied as a bibliography of Michelangelo and a biography of Kipling. In addition to his Italian scholarship, whose main fruit was a prose translation of the Divine Comedy (3 vols., 1891–92), his editorial activities extended from The Poems of John Donne (2 vols., 1895) to The Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle (2 vols., 1886). His friendships with distinguished artists and writers of his time, on both sides of the Atlantic, formed a powerful cultural influence in the U.S. His Letters (2 vols., 1913) are justly famous, and separate collections of his correspondence with particular individuals have been published.