Arlo Bates

Bates began writing as a student, and after graduation he briefly painted china, tutored and worked as a clerk in a metal foundry. He then moved to Boston where he became the editor of the Boston Sunday Courier in 1880. After 1893 he became professor of English at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, teaching there until his death in 1918.

In 1882, Bates married author Harriet Lenora Vose who wrote under the name. Eleanor Putnam. They collaborated on a novel, Prince Vance, that was completed in 1886. Later that year Vose died and every work book that Bates published, thereafter, is dedicated to her. Together, they had one son, named Oric, and even after his wife's death, Bates remained close to her father, George Vose, a professor at Bowdoin College.

In 1884 Bates published, The Pagans, a novel that centered upon struggling artists in late 19th century Boston. A theme he revisited in other novels. Over the next twenty-five years, Bates wrote several fourteen novels, seven collections of poetry, short stories and several works of criticism. Arlo Bates, one of Maine's leading men of letters, died, August 24, 1918 at the age of 67.

Notable Works:

Collected Poems:

Berries of the Brier (1886)
Sonnets in Shadow, (1887)
a Poet and his Self (1891)
Told in the Gate (1892)
The Torchbearers (1894)
Under the Beech Tree (1899)

Novels:

Patty's Perversities, 1881
The Pagans, 1884
The Philistines, 1888
The Puritans, 1899

(The last three can be downloaded from "The Project Gutenberg")

Sources:

The Magazine Of Poetry, A Quarterly Review, Charles Wells Moulton publisher, 1891 (page 161)

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famousamericans.net

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cdl.library.cornell.edu