Papers of Charles Townsend Copeland

Charles Townsend Copeland (1860-1952), Harvard College Class of 1882, writer, poet, and Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, taught English at Harvard College from 1890 to 1928.

Born in Calais, Maine on April 27, 1860 to Henry Clay Copeland and Sarah Lowell Copeland, Copeland attended Calais High School before coming to Harvard in 1878 as a member of the Class of 1882. As a student at Harvard, Copeland served as editor of the Harvard Advocate. Following his graduation from Harvard in 1882, Copeland taught for a year at a private boys' school in Englewood, New Jersey (1882-1883) before attending Harvard Law School from 1883 to 1884. In 1885, Copeland began writing book reviews for the Boston Advertiser, and then soon transferred to the Boston Post where he reviewed books and plays until 1892.

Affectionately known as "Copey" to his Harvard students, Copeland returned to the College as Lecturer on English literature in 1893, a position he held until 1910 when he was named Assistant professor of English. Copeland served as Associate professor from 1917 to 1925 when he was appointed Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory (1925-1928, and emeritus). While at Harvard, Copeland taught English A, a required freshman composition course; English 12, a writing class in which students wrote weekly 1,000 word compositions and then read them to Copeland; and lecture courses on Samuel Johnson and his contemporaries, English letter writers, and English Romantic poets. Copeland's teaching style was noted students include T.S. Eliot and Helen Keller, who took Copeland's courses given at Radcliffe College. Outside of the classroom, beginning in 1931 at the suggestion of Harvard's dean of freshmen students, Copeland invited two or three recommneded freshman students each week to his dormitory rooms in Hollis Hall, and later to his apartment in Cambridge, to engage in lively conversaion each week during the school year. Beginning in 1907, Copeland also lectured in English literature university extension courses at Harvard's Lowell Institute.

Copeland's noted published works include Life of Edwin Booth (1901) and Freshman English and Theme Correcting in Harvard College written with Henry Milner Rideout in 1901. Copeland was also a contributor on literary topics to Atlantic Monthly.

Professionally, Copeland was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Charles Townsend Copeland Association, founded by devoted friends and former students in 1906, was named in his honor.

Copeland died on July 24, 1952 in Waverley, a section of Belmont, Massachusetts.