Ripley Hitchcock

Ripley Hitchcock, born James Ripley Wellman Hitchcock, (1857–1918) was a prominent American editor. He edited the works of Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Zane Grey, Joel Chandler Harris, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.^[1]

Biography

Ripley Hitchcock was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in 1857.^[1] His father was surgeon Alfred Hitchcock (1813-1874). He graduated from Harvard University in 1877. After his graduation, he was a special student at Harvard in fine arts and philosophy. He attended lectures at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons for one year.^[2]

He started work as a journalist for The New York Tribune in 1882. In 1890, he became literary adviser for D. Appleton & Company, in which capacity he edited Edward Noyes Westcott's narrative David Harum (1898) into a bestseller, later made into a film. From 1902 to 1906, he worked for A. S. Barnes as vice president. From 1906 onwards, he worked as an editor for Harper and Brothers.^[1] He unfanged Stephen Crane's lewd details and Theodore Dreiser's irony.^[3]

He also wrote books on art and the history of the West and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Century Association and the Authors Club.^[1]

Bibliography

Wikisource has original works written by or about: James Ripley Wellman Hitchcock

• The Western Art Movement (New York, 1885)
• A Study of George Jenness, with a catalogue of the Jenness exhibition (1885)
• Etching in America (1886)
• Madonnas by old masters (1888)
• Some American painters in water colors: Fac-similes of new works by William D. Smedley ... [et al.] ; with portraits of the artists and representations of their work in black-and-white (1890)
• Thomas De Quincey: A study (1899)
• Louisiana Purchases Explorations Early History Building Of West (1903)
• Richard Henry Stoddard: Some personal notes (1903)
• The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1905)

References