Josiah Gilbert Holland

Josiah Gilbert Holland (July 24, 1819 – October 12, 1881) was an American novelist, essayist, poet and spiritual mentor to the Nation in the years following the Civil War. Born in Western Massachusetts, he was “the most successful man of letters in the United States” in the latter half of the nineteenth century and sold more books in his lifetime than Mark Twain did in his.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Born	(1819-07-24)July 24, 1819 Dwight, Belchertown, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	October 12, 1881(1881-10-12) (aged 62) Park Avenue, New York, New York, U.S.
Resting place	Springfield Cemetery, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.
Pen name	Timothy Titcomb J.G. Holland
Occupation	Writer editor poet publisher lecturer physician teacher superintendent
Language	American English
Period	Modern
Genres	Romantic poetry fiction journalism Fireside poets travelogue Self-help book opinion journalism literary criticism polemic essay spiritual literature advice column autobiography correspondence oration
Literary movement	Romanticism, Transcendentalism and Literary realism
Years active	from 1844
Employers	Springfield Republican Scribner’s Monthly
Notable works	Life of Abraham Lincoln Miss Gilbert’s Career Bitter-sweet
Spouse	Elizabeth Luna Chapin ​ ​ (m. 1845)​
Children	5, including Arthur Gilbert, Annie Elizabeth H. Howe, Kate Melia H. Van Wagenen, Julia and Theodore
Parents	Harrison Holland and Anna Gilbert
Signature

Known often by his initials “J.G.,” Holland penned the first biography of Abraham Lincoln just months after his assassination, which was a bestseller. Holland was the first to publish the first known poem written by an African American.

One of Holland’s novels was among the earliest examples of the genre that became literary realism. He published a few poems of Emily Dickinson’s in the newspaper that he edited. Holland and his wife, Elizabeth Chapin Holland, were close friends with her.

Holland became a popular Lyceum lecturer and wrote advice essays under the pseudonym Timothy Titcomb as well as lyrics to hymns, including the beloved Methodist Christmas tune "There's a Song in the Air.” He helped establish and was editor of the middle-class flagship magazine Scribner's Monthly.

Though Holland was a contemporary of the canonical and more renowned poet Walt Whitman and the novelist Herman Melville, neither “ever tasted the sweets of success as Holland did, perhaps, because neither wrote what the nation’s readers cared so much about.” His writings are quoted by politicians and pastors alike though few today recognize Holland’s name.

Biography

Born along the Hop Brook near the intersection of Federal Street and Orchard Road, in the village of Dwight, in Belchertown, Massachusetts, on July 24, 1819, Holland grew up in a poor family struggling to make ends meet. He spent only a few years at the low-slung family farmhouse at Dwight and later quipped that he’d like to “burn it to the ground.” The youngest of six children, his parents were deeply religious and evangelical, from pious Puritan stock.

His father moved the family every year or two: Heath, back to Belchertown, South Hadley, Granby and Northampton. Josiah worked in a factory to help the family. He then spent a short time studying at Northampton High School before withdrawing due to ill health. He tried daguerreotypy and taught penmanship from town to town, reciting "his own poems to his intimate friends."

He saved enough money to study medicine at Berkshire Medical College, where he took a degree in 1843. Hoping to become a successful physician, he began a medical practice with classmate Dr. Charles Bailey in Springfield, Massachusetts. He then opened a women’s hospital in Springfield with his former roommate from college, Charles Robinson, who would become the first governor of the State of Kansas, but it failed within six months.

J.G. Holland in undated photograph

Marriage and career

In 1845 he married Elizabeth Luna Chapin, “the scion of an old and substantial Springfield family.” She would become a confidant and intimate friend of Emily Dickinson.

In early 1847, Holland begin publishing a newspaper, The Bay State Weekly Courier, but the attempt proved unsuccessful, as did his medical practice. He also published work in the Southern Literary Messenger.

He left New England that spring for the South, and took a teaching position in Richmond, Virginia, followed by one in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he was named superintendent and implemented the ideas of fellow Massachusetts educator and reformer Horace Mann.

In fall 1848, he and his wife were invited to a large cotton plantation in northeastern Louisiana and Holland wrote down his observations. Here he received word that his poetry would be published in the Knickerbocker Magazine and The Home Journal.

Josiah Gilbert Holland

Springfield

In April 1849, Holland and his wife returned to Western Massachusetts. His mother-in-law was dying and his wife went to care for her. The following month he was offered $40 a month as assistant editor of the Springfield Daily Republican, where he began working with the younger, formidable and charming owner—the journalist and editor Samuel Bowles.

On Wednesday, September 26, 1849, the Republican began publishing Holland's writing of plantation life in a seven-part series, though uncredited, titled, "Three Weeks on a Cotton Plantation." They were well-received by a curious public. He wrote local news and essays, many of which were collected and published in book form, helping establish his literary reputation. Bowles encouraged Holland to publish under the pseudonym Timothy Titcomb, which he did to great success.

Under the editorial leadership of Bowles and Holland, the Republican became the most widely-read and respected small city daily in America. In 1851, Holland received an A.B. honorary doctorate degree from Amherst College, a few miles north from his birthplace, where Edward Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's father) was treasurer.

Holland's first book under his birth name was a two-volume History of Western Massachusetts (1855), the first book to feature a poem by a Black woman poet in the U.S. He followed in 1857 with an historical novel, The Bay-Path: A Tale of Colonial New England Life, and a collection of essays titled Titcomb's Letters to Young People, Single and Married in 1858. There were at least fifty editions of this book. He also published his narrative poem “Bitter-Sweet” that year. In 1857, he began touring on the Lyceum lecture circuit, soon mentioned with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Bayard Taylor and George William Curtis.

Gold-Foil: Hammered from Popular Proverbs under his Timothy Titcomb pen name came out in 1859. He published his second novel, Miss Gilbert‘s Career: An American Story, in 1860. It is considered one of the first novels of American Realism, anticipating “much abler and more penetrating realists” who would come later that century. The year following he released Lessons in Life: A Series of Familiar Essays (1861).

In 1862, he erected an opulent home in the Italianate villa style (also called a “Swiss-chalet style”). It was located on a bluff overlooking the Connecticut River in North Springfield near present day 110 Atwater Terrace. Holland named the mansion “Brightwood”; it was painted Venetian red. The neighborhood today retains the name Brightwood. When Sam Bowles took an extended trip to Europe, Holland temporarily assumed the duties as editor-in-chief of the Springfield Republican. After the Civil War he reduced his editorial duties and wrote many of his most popular works, including the Life of Abraham Lincoln (1866), and Kathrina: Her Life and Mine, In a Poem (1867).

Lincoln

Holland wrote an eloquent eulogy of Abraham Lincoln within days of Lincoln's death, prompting a commission for a full biography of the late president. He quickly pulled together the lengthy Life of Abraham Lincoln, finished in February 1866. The 544-page bestseller portrayed Lincoln as an emancipator opposed to slavery and began many enduring myths about the slain President.

New York

He moved with his family to 46 Park Avenue in New York City in 1872. These years in New York were also productive for his own literary efforts. During the 1870s he published three novels: Arthur Bonnicastle (1873), Sevenoaks (1875), and Nicholas Minturn (1877), which first were serialized in Scribners (afterwards it became The Century Magazine). His poetry volumes included The Marble Prophecy (1872), The Mistress and the Manse (1874), and The Puritan's Guest (1881).

Josiah Gilbert Holland and others on the porch of Bonniecastle, Alexandria Bay, New York

In 1877, Holland erected a summer house on one of the Thousand Islands in upstate New York, in Alexandria Bay, where one of its streets is named for him. He gave the mansion itself the name “Bonniecastle” from the name of the titular hero of his novel, Arthur Bonnicastle (1873). It is known as the Bonnie Castle Resort & Marina today.

Death

Josiah Gilbert Holland died on October 12, 1881, at the age of 62, in New York City of heart failure. The evening prior, he “remained late at the office to finish an editorial tribute to the martyred President James A. Garfield,” who had been assassinated a few weeks before. Most small town newspapers and major metropolitan dailies published memorial tributes to Holland, including journals that had often spoken scornfully of his “literary mediocrity, his triteness, and his intellectual parochialism.” John Greenleaf Whittier, the American Quaker poet and abolitionist, consistently praised Holland throughout his life and upon his death. The New York Times referred to J.G. Holland as “one of the most celebrated writers which this country has produced.”

Holland is buried in Springfield Cemetery in Springfield, Massachusetts. His imposing monument includes a bas-relief portrait sculpted by the eminent American 19th-century sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and includes the Latin inscription "Et vitam impendere vero" meaning "to devote life to truth".

Works

• History of Western Massachusetts (1855)
• The Bay-Path: A Tale of Colonial New England Life (1857)
• Bitter-sweet; A Poem (1858)
• Letters to Young People, Single and Married (1858)
• Gold-Foil, Hammered from Popular Proverbs (1859)
• Miss Gilbert’s Career: An American Story (1860)
• Lessons in Life; A Series of Familiar Essays (1861)
• Letters to the Joneses (1863)
• The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1866)
• Kathrina: Her Life and Mine, in a poem, (1867)
• Christ And The Twelve: Or Scenes and Events in the Life of Our Saviour and His Apostles, as Painted by the Poets (1867)
• The Marble Prophecy, And Other Poems (1872)
• Garnered Sheaves: The Complete Poetical Works (1872)
• Illustrated Library of Favorite Song: Based upon folk songs, and comprising songs of the heart, songs of home, songs of life, and songs of nature (1872)
• Plain Talks On Familiar Subjects: A Series of Popular Lectures (1872)
• Arthur Bonnicastle: An American Novel (1873)
• The Mistress of the Manse: A Poem (1874)
• The Story of Sevenoaks: A Story of To-Day (1875)
• Nicholas Minturn: A Study in a Story (1876)
• Every-Day Topics: A Book of Briefs (1876) First series
• The Puritan’s Guest, And Other Poems (1881)
• Concerning the Jones Family (1881) (revised from the 1863 book)
• Every-Day Topics: A Book of Briefs (1882) Second series

Legacy and influence

Although Josiah Gilbert Holland’s 23 books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry are rarely read today, during the late nineteenth century they were enormously popular and by 1894 more than 750,000 volumes were sold.

Holland was born at the beginning of the period of romanticism in American literature. He is considered one of the fireside poets such as contemporaries William Cullen Bryant and James Russell Lowell and his work appeared in anthologies, featuring domestic themes, messages of morality and focused on a historical romantic past. He is also categorized as among the ”minor” New England authors of the transcendental period.

In the History of American Literature by Leonidas Warren Payne, Jr., and published in 1919, Holland is “said to have reached a wider popular audience than most of the other minor poets.” Called "a poetic 'play' infused with the beauties of Christianity," Holland's first book-length poem Bitter-Sweet: A Poem (1858, 220 pp.) sold 90,000 copies by 1894 and remained in print four decades after his death. Thirty years after Holland's death, an "outstandingly authoritative commentator upon American literature" called Arthur Bonnicastle "the best" of Holland's five novels and another wrote that it was “undoubtedly Holland's masterpiece." The novel remained in print into the 1920s.

In 1875, Holland wrote a letter to be read at the dedication of a monument to Edgar Allan Poe, the poet and writer, though Holland wrote that the man and his poetry were “without value.” Holland was against Women's suffrage but donated funds to the New England Female Medical College in Boston. He was member of a Springfield church (North Congregationalist) that was frequented by abolitionists, freedmen and fugitive slaves though Josiah was not considered an abolitionist.

Literary clubs in Holland’s honor formed in towns and cities across the country, especially in the Midwest. Newspapers published memorials on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Fans obtained wood from maple trees standing in the yard of his birthplace at Dwight, Mass., to fashion into memorabilia such as penholders. The doorstone of his birthplace, which burned to the ground in 1876, was recovered in 1932 and placed at the Stone House Museum, which also displays first editions of his works.

On Emily Dickinson

J. G. Holland and his wife were frequent correspondents and intimate family friends of poet Emily Dickinson. She was a guest at their Springfield home on numerous occasions. Dickinson sent more than ninety letters to the Hollands between 1853 and 1886 in which she shares “the details of life that one would impart to a close family member: the status of the garden, the health and activities of members of the household, references to recently-read books.”

Emily was a poet “influenced by transcendentalism and dark romanticism,” and her work bridged “the gap to Realism.” Of the ten poems published in Dickinson's lifetime, the Springfield Daily Republican, with Sam Bowles and Josiah Holland as editors, published five, all unsigned, between 1852 and 1866. Some scholars believe that Bowles promoted her the most; Dickinson wrote letters and sent her poems to both men. Later, as editor of Scribner’s Monthly beginning in 1870, Holland told Dickinson’s childhood friend Emily Fowler Ford that he had “some poems of [Dickinson’s] under consideration for publication [in Scribner’s Monthly]—but they really are not suitable—they are too ethereal.”

Publishes oldest African American poem

Josiah Gilbert Holland published the oldest known work of literature written by an African American in North America. A 16-year-old named Lucy Terry (1733–1821) witnessed two White families attacked by Native Americans in 1746. The fight took place in Deerfield, Mass. Known as “Bars Fight,” her poem was told orally until it was published, thirty-three years after her death, first in The Springfield Daily Republican, on November 20, 1854, as an excerpt from Holland's History of Western Massachusetts, which was published as a book the following year.

On Melville and Whitman

Holland, Herman Melville and Walt Whitman were born the same year.

Holland, as associate editor of the The Republican, was critically favorable to canonical novelist Herman Melville and as co-founder and editor of Scribner's Monthly, Holland turned down publishing the more widely read canonical poet Walt Whitman.

Considered a writer and man of "Victorian virtue," J.G. Holland found Whitman's poetry “immoral.” Whitman later called Holland, “a man of his time, not possessed of the slightest forereach; ... the style of man ... who can tell the difference between a dime and a fifty-cent piece—but is useless for occasions of more serious moment.” The irony was that Holland wrote a bestseller after the “more serious moment” of President Lincoln’s assassination. All the same, even Springfield Republican publisher Samuel Bowles "thought Holland something of a prig.” A later biographer had this to say:

That Josiah Gilbert Holland remained priggish and prudish to the end of his days is all too abundantly attested. His provincial ethical standards; his subconscious Pharisaism; his incorrigible moralizing; his stubborn opposition to woman suffrage; his failure to distinguish between social drinking and debauchery, between light wine and strong whisky, between beer and rum, between the intelligent frankness of Walt Whitman and the vulgar pornography of The Black Crook—all these remained almost as irritatingly obtrusive at the end of his career as at the beginning.

On the word "jazz"

Holland coined a term that later became the word "jazz." The earliest tracing in the Oxford English Dictionary finds that “jasm” first appears in Holland’s 1860 novel, Miss Gilbert's Career: “‘She's just like her mother... Oh! she’s just as full of jasm!’.. ‘Now tell me what jasm is.’.. ‘If you'll take thunder and lightening [sic], and a steamboat and a buzz-saw, and mix 'em up, and put 'em into a woman, that's jasm.’”

The word was used to describe the "inexpressible personal force of the Yankee" and morphed into the word “jazz” in the early twentieth century.

Postbellum spiritual mentor

In the devastating wake of the American Civil War, Holland offered Americans spiritual guidance and ultimately, hope.

That there was a Dr. Holland, a man who brought hope, reassurance, continuity and order into a chaotic, threatening world was itself a fact of great spiritual significance for millions of Americans. Unlike Henry Ward Beecher, whom he steadfastly supported, nothing even remotely suspect ever came near him. Instead, in such essays as "The Reconstruction of National Morality," published in April 1876, and "Falling from High Places," published in April 1878, he offered acute analyses of why, in the post-war years, so many Americans, including prominent Christian leaders, had succumbed to the temptation of attempting to obtain great riches dishonestly. Such was the sanctity of Holland's own life that he seemed to offer a living, earthly warrant for the promise of eternity that he pictured in his writings.

Of poets and their mission, Holland wrote:

The poets of the world are the prophets of humanity. They forever reach after and foresee the ultimate good. They are evermore building the Paradise that it is to be, painting the Millennium that is to come. When the world shall reach the poet’s ideal, it will arrive at perfection; and much good will it do the world to measure itself by this ideal and struggle to lift the real to its lofty level.

He also wrote: "God never said it would be easy, He just said He would go with me." Holland’s narrative poem “Bitter-Sweet” would become one of his most popular, and was described in 1894, by biographer Harriette Merrick Plunkett, as,

Dr. Holland’s reflections on the mysteries of Life and Death, on the soul-wracking problems of Doubt and Faith, on the existence of Evil as one of the vital conditions of the universe, on the questions of Predestination, Original Sin, Free-will, and the whole haunting brood of Calvinistic theological metaphysics.

She declared it to be “truly an original poem,” and compared it to the works of Robert Burns or Sir Walter Scott. She cited the praise that it had earned from poet James Russell Lowell. Today, a Holland sentence or paragraph is still quoted by politicians, artists and spiritual leaders alike, including Martin Luther King, Jr., though few recognize his name.

In film

In 1920, Holland’s novel Sevenoaks (1875) was adapted into the Goldwyn comedy-drama, Jes' Call Me Jim, starring Will Rogers.

In the 2016 film A Quiet Passion about the life of Emily Dickinson, Steve Dan Mills portrays Holland.

In the 2018 film Wild Nights with Emily, Josiah and Elizabeth Holland are portrayed by actor Michael Churven and actress Guinevere Turner, respectively.

The Osage Nation politician Arthur Bonnicastle—named for the titular character in Holland’s 1873 novel—appears as a character in the 2023 film Killers of the Flower Moon.

Further reading

Bacon, Edwin Monroe. Literary Pilgrimages in New England to the Homes of Famous Makers of American Literature and Among Their Haunts and the Scenes of Their Writings. United States, Silver, Burdett, 1902.

Dickinson, Emily, et al. Letters to Dr. and Mrs. Josiah Gilbert Holland. United States, Harvard University Press, 1951.

Gabriel, Ralph Henry. The Pageant of America: A Pictorial History of the United States. Volume 11: The American spirit in letters. United States, Yale University Press, 1926, 201.

Greene, Aella. Reminiscent Sketches. Florence, Massachusetts: Press of the Bryant Print, 1902.

Habegger, Alfred. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. United Kingdom, Random House Publishing Group, 2001.

Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age. United States, M.E. Sharpe, 2003., p. 13.

Hollander, John. American Poetry - The Nineteenth Century Vol. lI. United States, Library of America, 1993.

Keane, Patrick J.. Emily Dickinson's Approving God: Divine Design and the Problem of Suffering. United Kingdom, University of Missouri Press, 2008.

Leiter, Sharon. Critical Companion to Emily Dickinson: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work. United States, Facts On File, Incorporated, 2007.

(Mass ), Springfield. The Nation Weeping for Its Dead: Observances at Springfield, Massachusetts, on President Lincoln's Funeral Day, Wednesday, April 19, 1865, Including Dr. Holland's Eulogy.

Mead, Carl David. Yankee Eloquence in the Middle West: The Ohio Lyceum, 1850-1870. United States, Michigan State College Press, 1951.

Meyer, Rose D.. Authors Digest: The World's Great Stories in Brief. United States, Issued under the auspices of the Authors Press, 1927. A five-page briefing on Holland’s novel Sevenoaks.

Morgan, Robert J.. Then Sings My Soul Special Edition: 150 Christmas, Easter, and All-Time Favorite Hymn Stories. United States, Thomas Nelson, 2022.

Tower, James Eaton (1905). Springfield Present and Prospective: The City of Homes. Pond & Campbell. pp. 60–63.

Webster's New Explorer Dictionary of American Writers. United States, Federal Street Press, 2004.

His writing may be found at the University of Pennsylvania's Online Books Page.

With special thanks to Cliff McCarthy and Mark McHugh.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). "Holland, Josiah Gilbert". A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.

External links

• Works by Josiah Gilbert Holland at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Josiah Gilbert Holland at the Internet Archive
• Works by or about Timothy Titcomb at the Internet Archive
• Works by Josiah Gilbert Holland at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Holland Collection of Literary Letters, University of Colorado Boulder
• Titcomb’s Letters to Young People, Single and Married
• Plunkett, Harriette Merrick. Josiah Gilbert Holland. United States, C. Scribner's Sons, 1894
• Short audio essay, "A Serendipitous Encounter With The Ghost Of A Once-Famous Belchertonian," about Josiah Gilbert Holland
• Feature article in the Springfield Republican on the 200th anniversary of Holland’s birthday
• C. Scribner's & Sons published Holland’s Complete Works in a 16-volume set that may be found online at HathiTrust
• All of his published books may be found online at HathiTrust
• His papers are collected at the New York Public Library and at The Archives at Yale
• Much of his work remains in print by classic reprinting publishers