Hiram Corson (November 6, 1828 – June 15, 1911) was an American professor of literature.

Life

Corson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He held a position in the library of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (1849–1856), was a lecturer on English literature in Philadelphia (1859–1865), and was professor of English at Girard College, Philadelphia (1865–1866), and in St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland (1866–1870). In 1870-1871 he was professor of rhetoric and oratory at Cornell University, where he was professor of Anglo-Saxon and English literature (1872–1886), of English literature and rhetoric (1886–1890), and from 1890 to 1903 (when he became professor emeritus) of English literature, a chair formed for him. His papers are held at Cornell University.

thumb|Bookplate of Hiram Corson (1828–1911) affixed to the inside cover of William Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819), reflecting Corson's personal connection to the literary world.

Works

  • Chaucer's Legende of Goode Women (editor). 1863.
  • An Elocutionary Manual. Charles Desilver. 1864.
  • Satires of Juvenal (translator). 1868.
  • Jottings on the Text of Hamlet. 1874. (The reference to Jottings on the Text of Macbeth in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article appears to be a mistake for Jottings on the Text of Hamlet.)
  • The University of the Future. 1875.
  • The Aims of Literary Study. 1895.
  • The Voice and Spiritual Education. 1896.
  • Selections from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (editor). 1896.
  • An Introduction to the Study of Milton. 1899.
  • The voice and spiritual education. Macmillan. 1904.

He edited a translation by his wife, Caroline Rollin, of Pierre Janet's Mental State of Hystericals (1901).

Notes

References

Further reading

  • George Norman Highley, ed. The Corson family: a history of the descendants of Benjamin Corson, son of Cornelius Corssen of Staten Island, New York, H.L. Everett, 1906.
  • Brief biography about Hiram's life at Cornell