“I do not commonly encourage young persons to write in verse. If they…” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“I do not commonly encourage young persons to write in verse. If they feel the impulse to do so very strongly, I advise them to take some signature and stick to it.”

Practical and slightly sardonic advice about the hazards of publishing immature verse · Letter to Mrs. E. S. Sinclair, September 16, 1882

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

About Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

29 August 1809–7 October 1894

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., born 29 August 1809 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and dead 7 October 1894 in Boston, was one of the most recognizably versatile figures in nineteenth-century American culture: physician, medical reformer, anatomist, professor, poet, novelist, essayist, conversational satirist, and public…

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