Paul Elmer More

Paul Elmer More 1864-1937, American critic, educator, and philosopher, b. St. Louis. More taught Sanskrit and classical literature and then was a newspaper editor until 1914, after which he wrote and lectured. Associated with Irving Babbitt in the movement called the New Humanism, More became an authority on Greek philosophy. His major works are the Shelburne Essays (11 vol., 1904-21), The Greek Tradition (5 vol., 1921-31), and the New Shelburne Essays (3 vol., 1928-36).

Bibliography: See biography by A. H. Dakin (1960); study by F. X. Duggan (1967).

More, Paul Elmer (1864–1937),born in St. Louis, graduated from Washington University (1887), and continued his studies there and at Harvard. He taught Sanskrit and the classics at Harvard and Bryn Mawr, but then became a critic in New York, editing The Nation (1909–14), finally returning to scholarship as a lecturer at Princeton. His broad classical knowledge is shown in his Shelburne Essays (14 vols., 1904–36), and in other critical works that include Platonism (1917), The Religion of Plato (1921), Hellenistic Philosophies (1923), The Christ of the New Testament (1924), Christ the Word (1927), The Demon of the Absolute (1928), and The Catholic Faith (1931). Pages from an Oxford Diary (1937) is an autobiographical work. More was associated with Irving Babbitt as a leader in the New Humanist movement.