Henry Seidel Canby

Henry Seidel Canby was a critic, editor, and Yale University professor. Henry Seidel Canby was the son of Edward T. Canby, a Quaker who arrived in Wilmington, Delaware, circa 1740 and rose to prominence in the region through milling and business. Canby was born in Wilmington and attended the Wilmington Friends School. He graduated from Yale in 1899 and taught there until 1922, when he was appointed professor. Following a four-year term as editor of the New York Evening Post's literary review,...See more

Henry Seidel Canby was a critic, editor, and Yale University professor. Henry Seidel Canby was the son of Edward T. Canby, a Quaker who arrived in Wilmington, Delaware, circa 1740 and rose to prominence in the region through milling and business. Canby was born in Wilmington and attended the Wilmington Friends School. He graduated from Yale in 1899 and taught there until 1922, when he was appointed professor. Following a four-year term as editor of the New York Evening Post's literary review, Canby co-founded and served as editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, the last until 1936. The Yelping Hill Association was founded in 1922 by Canby, his wife Marion Ponsonby Gause Canby, Mason and Helen Fox Trowbridge, Beverly Waugh and Caroline (Lena) Jennings Kunkel, Henry Noble and Marjorie Dodd MacCracken, Lee Wilson and Marion Roberts Canby Dodd, and David Stanley and Cora Deming Welch Smith. A summer colony modeled after the Pocono Lake Preserve Quaker community in Pennsylvania, where some of the families had spent previous summers. Canby worked for the Saturday Review of Literature and the Book of the Month Club primarily from his office, The Writer's Cramp, on Yelping Hill. See less