Gamaliel Bradford
Gamaliel Bradford was an American author and psychographer, notable for being a descendant of the colonial leader Governor William Bradford. Despite a promising literary background and a father who supported his intellectual pursuits, Bradford struggled with poor health and ultimately dropped out of Harvard after just one year. He married Helen Hubbard Ford, who helped create a scholarly environment in their home near Boston. Throughout his life, Bradford wrote novels, plays, and poems, but they did not gain significant recognition. He eventually developed a unique literary style he called "psychography," focusing on the artistic presentation of character and personality. His most acclaimed work, "Damaged Souls," reflects his deep exploration of human motives and emotions. Despite his physical ailments, Bradford maintained an active literary life, publishing one book annually and engaging with prominent literary figures through correspondence. He is remembered as a reclusive yet intellectually curious individual, whose introspective writings resonate with themes of vulnerability and understanding of the human condition.
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Subject Terms
Gamaliel Bradford
American biographer
- Born: October 9, 1863
- Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts
- Died: April 11, 1932
- Place of death: Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts
Biography
Gamaliel Bradford was the eighth in descent from colonial leader Governor William Bradford and the third Gamaliel in the family whose only son did not survive him. His father rebuilt the family fortune, wrote tracts and letters on political and financial matters, and bequeathed his son a fine library but very poor health.
A dropout from Harvard in his first year, the semi-invalid recluse in 1886 married into another long-established family. Helen Hubbard Ford Bradford created for him a scholarly retreat in their home ten miles from Boston. They had one son and one daughter.
Gamaliel Bradford was always interested in literature, but his own novels, plays, and poems were unsuccessful. He thereupon fashioned himself a career as a “psychographer,” originating a genre, as he defined it, of “condensed, essentially artistic presentation of character . . . a soul picture.” He haunted the library of the Athenaeum Society and in his later years, despite long periods of hypochondriacal illness, published one book a year. Critics consider his greatest book to be Damaged Souls, perhaps, as Newton Arvin suggested, because he himself was one. His journal, which was published after his death, suggests that he was “a quite recognizable younger contemporary of Henry Adams,” but his literary method was more like that of Henry James. He sought to extract the essentials, the motives, the permanent, and the vital from the souls he investigated. His letters reveal a wide range of reading and a quick interest in affairs of the world, and he numbered among his correspondents (though not among his acquaintances) Robert Frost, H. L. Mencken, Bliss Perry, Henry Seidel Canby, and Edwin Arlington Robinson.
Critic John Macy thought him a truly balanced mind with a rich, generous nature. Bradford was described by a contemporary as a “little, gray-bearded, bald-headed recluse with a large inherited fortune, no health, bad nerves, and an inquiring mind.”
Bibliography
Bradford, Gamaliel. The Journal of Gamaliel Bradford. Edited by Van Wyck Brooks. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1933.
Bradford, Gamaliel. The Letters of Gamaliel Bradford. Edited by Van Wyck Brooks. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934.
Bradford, Gamaliel. Life and I: Autobiography of Humanity. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1928. Bradford’s autobiography, journals, and letters are excellent sources of information about this reticent man.
Carver, George. Alms for Oblivion: Books, Men, and Biography. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1946. Bradford is mentioned.
Wagenknecht, Edward. Gamaliel Bradford. Boston: Twayne, 1982. A thorough biography.