William James Linton papers (Ms.80.5)

Biographical note

William James Linton (December 7, 1812-December 29, 1897) was born in London and spent a major portion of his life in England before leaving, in 1866, to come to the United States, where he spent the remainder of his life. From an early age he demonstrated an interest in artistic matters, poetry, and political activity--for which three interests he is chiefly regarded today. In his youthful days in England he studied wood engraving seriously, while at the same time involving himself significantly in the active political scene characteristic of the 1840s. He was much concerned with the Republican politics of the day, as his correspondence with the Italian political reformer Mazzini (specimens of which are in this collection) indicates. His marriage to the novelist Eliza Lynn, which ended in "amicable separation" (article on Linton in Dictionary of American Biography) caused him to become disenchanted with life in England and to leave that country for the United States.

Here he continued his literary and artistic endeavors in Hamden, Connecticut, a town near New Haven, where he established the Appledore Press, his own private press, where his "most ambitious pieces of imaginative work were produced" (local citation). From this press emanated many of his finest and most influential books of poetry and studies of wood-engraving, such as The Golden Apples of Hesperus (1882), Love Lore and Other Poems (1887), and the monumental Masters of Wood-Engraving (1889). Linton died in 1897, leaving behind him a large body of published material in addition to an important collection of personal papers, of which the Linton Papers herein arranged and described contains a significant representation. Perusing the correspondence in this collection, one can envisage Linton as a man full of enthusiasm about his interests, obviously eager to have his own way yet considerate of others in the process, and much interested in the common good, albeit not without a sense of humor.