Duyckinck, Evert Augustus

▪ American literary critic

born Nov. 23, 1816, New York, N.Y., U.S.

died Aug. 13, 1878, New York City

      American biographer, editor, and critic who with such works as the two-volume Cyclopaedia of American Literature (1855, supplement 1866), written with his younger brother George Long Duyckinck (1823–63), focused scholarly attention on American writing and contributed to the advance of American literature in the mid-19th century.

      Duyckinck was the son of a publisher. He graduated from Columbia College in 1835 and, like his brother, studied law for two years and was admitted to the bar but never practiced. He spent 1838–39 in Europe studying literature and upon his return to New York City was coeditor of Arcturus: A Journal of Books and Opinion. In 1847 he was briefly the editor of the Literary World: A Journal of American and Foreign Literature, Science, and Art. The following year he and his brother bought the journal and edited it together, making it the most influential literary weekly of the time, until 1853, when, despite its high quality, it failed financially.

      Duyckinck came to know most of the important writers of the day and fostered the careers of many—among them Herman Melville (Melville, Herman). The Cyclopaedia of American Literature included biographical and critical data on writers since colonial times and selections from their works. He also wrote several popular biographical compilations, including the Lives and Portraits of the Presidents of the United States and Portrait Gallery of Eminent Men and Women of Europe and America, 2 vol. (1873). His important collection of some 18,000 books is in the New York Public Library.

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