AMIABLE AUTOCRAT: A Biography of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes

A staid and scholarly biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes, poet, doctor, lecturer, teacher, portraying him in accurate, inconclusive and lifeless detail. This is in part a literary criticism in part a record of his achievements as a man of medicine, the witty, amiable autocrat of the breakfast table never quite comes to life. Here is account of his life, his Puritanical childhood in Cambridge, the school years at Ande and Harvard, two years of medical study in Paris, his versatile intermingling of medi study in Paris, his versatile of medical and literary minating in his appointment as Dean of Harvard Medical School and his fame as a writer. There is too record of his associations with Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson -- his connecti with the Atlantic. A rich, well-spent life in professional and personal outline, culled from his letters, essays, medical notes, etc.