15 Facts About FO Matthiessen

Francis Otto Matthiessen was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies.

FO Matthiessen's best known work, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman, celebrated the achievements of several 19th-century American authors and had a profound impact on a generation of scholars.

FO Matthiessen was known for his support of liberal causes and progressive politics.

Francis Otto FO Matthiessen was born in Pasadena, California on February 19,1902.

FO Matthiessen was the fourth of four children born to Frederick William Matthiessen and Lucy Orne Pratt.

FO Matthiessen completed his secondary education at Hackley School, in Tarrytown, New York.

FO Matthiessen then returned to Yale to teach for two years, before beginning a distinguished teaching career at Harvard.

FO Matthiessen was an American studies scholar and literary critic at Harvard University, and chaired its undergraduate program in history and literature.

FO Matthiessen was one of earliest scholars associated with the Salzburg Global Seminar.

FO Matthiessen seconded the nomination of the Progressive Party presidential candidate, Henry Wallace, at the party's convention in Philadelphia in 1948.

FO Matthiessen had a two-decade-long romantic relationship with the painter Russell Cheney, twenty years his senior.

FO Matthiessen committed suicide in 1950 by jumping from a 12th floor window of the Hotel Manger in Boston.

FO Matthiessen continued to be deeply affected by Russell Cheney's death, which was caused by a heart attack.

FO Matthiessen spent the evening before his death at the home of his friend and colleague, Kenneth Murdock, Harvard's Higginson Professor of English Literature.

FO Matthiessen was the first Senior Tutor at Eliot House, one of Harvard College's undergraduate residential houses.