Henry Nash Smith
Henry Nash Smith (1906-1986) was a prominent American literary scholar and educator, recognized for his significant contributions to the understanding of the literature and culture of the American Southwest. Born in Dallas, Texas, he earned his master’s degree from Harvard University before returning to teach at Southern Methodist University (SMU), where he became involved in editing the Southwest Review. Smith's early career was marked by a commitment to academic freedom, as he defended his work amidst controversy surrounding a preface he wrote for a William Faulkner manuscript.
He later pursued a doctorate at Harvard, focusing on American attitudes toward the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, which laid the foundation for his influential book, *Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth*, published in 1950. This work elevated Smith's status as an expert in American cultural history and earned him prestigious awards. Throughout his career, he held teaching positions at various institutions, including the University of Texas, University of Minnesota, and University of California, Berkeley, where he also served as department chair. Smith was highly regarded for his scholarship on Mark Twain and was instrumental in editing the Mark Twain Papers, setting new standards in literary editing. He passed away in a car accident in 1986, leaving behind a legacy as a defender of academic freedom and a key figure in American literary studies.
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Henry Nash Smith
Literary Critic
- Born: September 29, 1906
- Birthplace: Dallas, Texas
- Died: May 30, 1986
- Place of death: Near Elko, Nevada
Biography
Henry Nash Smith was born in Dallas, Texas, on September 29, 1906, the son of Loyd Bond Smith, an account, and Elizabeth Nash Smith. After graduating from Dallas’s Bryan Street High School, he studied at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in the same city and later did graduate work at Harvard University, where he received his master’s degree in 1927. He then returned to Texas to teach at SMU.
While there, he edited and produced the quarterly Southwest Review with John Hathaway McGinnis, who was the book review editor of the Dallas Morning News. Smith also wrote reviews for the newspaper’s book page. Meanwhile, he became a friend of writers J. Frank Dobie and Howard Mumford Jones and developed a keen interest in the literary culture of the Southwest. In August, 1933, he accompanied Dobie on a horseback trip in Mexico, where Dobie kept a diary of stories they heard.
In 1932, Smith visited William Faulkner, who gave him the manuscript of a short story, “Miss Zilphia Gant,,” for publication in Southwest Review. That story never appeared in Southwest Review, but Stanley Marcus published it as a twenty-nine-page book for his Book Club of Texas, and Smith wrote a preface for it. When the head of the SMU English department saw the book, he considered it obscene and subversive and fired Smith for writing its preface. Smith was in Europe when he received news of his dismissal, but after he returned home he defended his position and was not fired. Instead, he was transferred to the university’s comparative literature department. Afterward, Smith was an outspoken advocate of freedom of speech for academic professionals.
In 1936, Smith married Elinor Lucas. When Howard Mumford Jones was appointed head of the American civilization program at Harvard, Smith returned there to pursue a doctorate, which he earned in 1940 after writing a dissertation, “American Emotional and Imaginative Attitudes Toward the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, 1803-1850.” Smith then returned to teaching at SMU for a short time.
In 1942, Smith accepted a position at the University of Texas in Austin as a professor in both the English and history departments. In August, 1945, in response to wartime erosion of academic freedom on university campuses, Smith presented a paper before a student committee at the University of Texas, “The Controversy at the University of Texas, 1939-1945.” In 1945, he returned to Harvard for a year and then accepted a fellowship at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Two years later, he became professor of English at the University of Minnesota, where he later defended the right of faculty members to join the Communist Party in an essay, “Legislatures, Communists, and State Universities.”
In 1950, Smith published Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth, an expansion on his doctoral dissertation. The book was positively reviewed in The New York Times and brought Smith to the national forefront as an authority on the Southwest in American cultural history. The book also received the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University and the John H. Dunning Prize in United States History from the American Historical Association.
In 1953, Smith joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley as a professor of English. Smith maintained his position as a defender of academic freedom of speech by protesting the state’s requirement that faculty members sign loyalty oaths. Despite his objection to the university’s policy on that issue, Smith remained associated with the University of California throughout the remainder of his professional career. From 1957 to 1960 he chaired the English department. He also served as editor of the Mark Twain Papers, which were housed at the Berkeley campus, and negotiated with the Mark Twain estate for the publication of Twain’s works by the University of California Press. In 1960, he and William M. Gibson edited a two-volume collection of the correspondence between Twain and writer William Dean Howells. In 1962, Smith published Mark Twain: The Development of a Writer, a book that remains a major study of Twain’s writing.
Smith also was a visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen and at Moscow State University. In 1965, he traveled to Italy on a Fulbright Fellowship. From 1968 to 1969, he was president of the Modern Language Association. In 1974, he retired from the University of California faculty as a professor emeritus and was succeeded as editor of the Mark Twain Papers by Frederick Anderson. After Anderson’s sudden death in 1979, Smith returned to the Mark Twain Papers and resumed the general editorship until Robert Hirst replaced him in 1980.
Smith died on May 30, 1986, in a car accident near Elko, Nevada. Smith was an authority on literature and culture of the American Southwest and a frequent contributor of book reviews to literary journals. He is particularly noted as an authority on Twain, and his work as editor of the Mark Twain Papers set new standards in the field of literary editing.