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Henry
van Dyke (1852 – 1933) was an American author,
educator, and clergyman.
He graduated from Princeton University, 1873, and from Princeton
Theological Seminary, 1877 and served as a professor of English
literature at Princeton between 1899 and 1923. In 1908-09 Dr.
Van Dyke was an American lecturer at the University of Paris.
By appointment of President Wilson he became Minister to the
Netherlands and Luxembourg in 1913. He was elected to the American
Academy of Arts and Letters and received many other honors.
His son is Tertius van Dyke.
He
chaired the committee that wrote the first Presbyterian printed
liturgy, The Book of Common Worship of 1906. Among his popular
writings are the two Christmas stories The Other Wise Man (1896)
and The First Christmas Tree (1897). Various religious themes
of his work are also expressed in his poetry, hymns and the
essays collected in Little Rivers (1895) and Fisherman’s
Luck (1899). He wrote the lyrics to the popular hymn, "Joyful,
Joyful We Adore Thee" (1907), sung to the tune of Beethoven's
Ode to Joy. He compiled several short stories in The Blue Flower
(1902) named after the key symbol of Romanticism introduced
first by Novalis. He also contributed a chapter to the collaborative
novel, The Whole Family (1908). Among his poems is Katrina's
Sundial, the inspiration for the song Time Is by the group It's
a Beautiful Day on their eponymous 1969 debut album.
Van
Dyke's "Essays in Application" (1905) was quoted by
Jack London in the dystopian novel "The Iron Heel".
London disliked Van Dyke's ideas, but paid him the compliment
of predicting that his writings would still be remembered six
hundred years into the future and be cited by a Twenty-Sixth
Century writer as "an example of bourgeois thinking".
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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