In the long history of American literary scholarship, few figures embody the transition from nineteenth-century genteel letters to modern academic criticism as thoroughly as Henry Augustin Beers. Born on July 2, 1847, in Buffalo, New York, and dying on September 7, 1926, in New Haven, Connecticut, Beers spent nearly his entire adult life at Yale University, where his slight frame became a beloved fixture on campus fo…
“Shakspere is the most universal of writers. He touches more men at more points than Homer, or Dante, or Goethe. The deepest wisdom, the sweetest poetry, the widest range of character, are combined in his plays.”