Paul Elmer More (1864-1937), with Irving Babbitt a proponent of the New Humanism, was an outstanding American critic and scholar. His writings display erudition, good sense, forceful argument and far-reaching concerns. None are now in print. For an account of his long-continued failure to attract a following, see Byron C. Lambert's The Regrettable Silence of Paul Elmer More in the Winter 1999 Modern Age.

More was educated at Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard. After a short spell teaching Sanskrit and classics at Harvard and Bryn Mawr he become a literary journalist, serving as literary editor of The Independent (1901-03) and the New York Evening Post (1903-09) and as editor of The Nation (1909-14). His views, like those of many others at the time, started with the experience of the living; they ended however in classical restraint, traditional standards, and a somewhat idiosyncratic Anglo-catholicism. In an era of naturalism and socialism he therefore drew considerable critical fire, notably from H.L. Mencken, who nonetheless considered him the "nearest approach to a genuine scholar" America had.

His best known work is his Shelburne Essays, 11 vol. (1904-21), a collection of articles and reviews. Also notable are the books he wrote afer his retirement from journalism: Platonism (1917); The Religion of Plato (1921); Hellenistic Philosophies (1923); New Shelburne Essays (1928-36); and his biography and last published work, Pages from an Oxford Diary (1937). His Greek Tradition, 5 vol. (1924-31), is generally thought to be his finest work.

Also see the Wikipedia article on More, and "Paul Elmer More: America's Reactionary" (Modern Age, Fall, 2003) by Brian Domitrovic.

Writings

Many of More's books are available through Internet Archive and Google Books:

• Helena, and Occasional Poems (1890).
• The Great Refusal, Being Letters of a Dreamer in Gotham (1894).
• A Century of Indian Epigrams: Chiefly from the Sanskrit of Bhartrihari (1898).
• Benjamin Franklin (1900).
• Shelburne Essays, First Series (1906).
• Shelburne Essays, Second Series (1906).
• Shelburne Essays, Third Series (1906).
• Shelburne Essays, Fourth Series (1904).
• Shelburne Essays, Fifth Series (1908).
• Studies of Religious Dualism: Shelburne Essays, Sixth Series (1909).
• Shelburne Essays, Seventh Series (1910).
• Nietzsche (1912).
• The Drift of Romanticism: Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913).
• Aristocracy and Justice: Shelburne Essays, Ninth Series (1915).
• Platonism (1917).
• With the Wits: Shelburne Essays, Tenth Series (1919).
• A New England Group and Others: Shelburne Essays, Eleventh Series (1921).
• The Religion of Plato (1921).
• Hellenistic Philosophies (1923).
• On Being Human (1936).

Here are other texts. Many of them are taken from Professor Lambert's anthology, The Essential Paul Elmer More (New Rochelle, 1972), others from Daniel Aaron's anthology Paul Elmer More's Shelburne Essays on American Literature (New York, 1963), still others directly from the Shelburne Essays and other sources.

• "Arthur Symons: the Two Illusions" (1902).
• "Wealth and Culture" (1902).
• "A New Intrusion of Pedantry" (1903).
• "The Solitude of Nathaniel Hawthorne" (Shelburne Essays, First Series (1904).
• "The Influence of Emerson" (Shelburne Essays, First Series (1904).
• "Hawthorne: Looking Before and After" (Shelburne Essays, Second Series (1905).
• "Keats" (1905).
• "Dickens" (1906).
• "Walt Whitman" (Shelburne Essays, Fourth Series (1906)).
• "Benjamin Franklin" (Shelburne Essays, Fourth Series (1906)).
• "The Historic Sense" (1907).
• "The Teaching of the Classics" (1908).
• "Rousseau" (1908).
• "Pope" (1910).
• "Victorian Literature" (1910).
• "Criticism" (1910).
• "The Pragmatism of William James" (Shelburne Essays, Seventh Series (1910)).
• "Scholarship of Ideas" (1911).
• "Walter Pater" (Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913)).
• "Nietzsche" (Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913)).
• "Cardinal Newman" (Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913)).
• "Huxley" (Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913)).
• "Definitions of Dualism" (Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913)). A statement of his own philosophy.
• "The New Morality" (1914).
• "Academic Leadership" (1914).
• "Philosophy of the War" (Shelburne Essays, Ninth Series (1915), originally published November, 1914).
• "The Paradox of Oxford" (Shelburne Essays, Ninth Series (1915)).
• "Disraeli and Conservatism" (Shelburne Essays, Ninth Series (1915)).
• "Property and Law" (1915).
• "Natural Aristocracy" (1915).
• "Justice" (1915).
• "The Spirit and Poetry of Early New England" (Shelburne Essays, Eleventh Series (1921)).
• "Henry Adams" (Shelburne Essays, Eleventh Series (1921)).
• "Emerson" (Shelburne Essays, Eleventh Series (1921)).
• "Jonathan Edwards" (Shelburne Essays, Eleventh Series (1921)).
• "Progress" (1921).
• Selections from his Christ the Word (1927).
• And some from "The Demon of the Absolute" (1928).
• The Sceptical Approach to Religion (1934).
• An extract from his Marginalia (1936).