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, "Paul Elmer More: America's Reactionary" (Modern Age, Fall, 2003) by Brian Domitrovic, and Paul Elmer More at The Imaginative Conservative.
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).
- "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).