White, Hervey
Entry updated 8 August 2019. Tagged: Author.
(1866-1944) US utopian thinker and builder, poet and author; in the world of the intentional community, he is significant as the co-founder of two artists' colonies in Woodstock, New York: the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in 1902, and the Maverick colony in 1905. Influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement whose Utopian precepts and practice were shaped by William Morris and others, both continue to exist in some form, Maverick primarily as a significant concert venue.
White's first novels – Difference (1899) and Quicksand (1900), both nonfantastic – vigorously depicted the social reform movement in Chicago centred on Hull House founded by Jane Addams (1860-1935), where Charlotte Perkins Gilman also spent some time. Both his fiction and nonfiction convey a sense that significant lives can only be lived hands-on, along with a suspicion that he was some of a confabulator about his own adventurous life.
Of his works of interest, When Eve Was Not Created and Other Stories (coll 1901) contains fantasies, and Noll and the Fairies (1903) is a fairy story. Written for boys, Snake Gold: A Tale of Indian Treasure: Of an Ancient Emblem and its Power Over Men To-Day: And of the Hazard of Casa Blanca (1926) is a Lost Race tale set in Mexico. [JC]
Hervey White
born New London, Iowa: 26 November 1866
died Woodstock, New York: 28 October 1944
works (selected)
- Noll and the Fairies (Chicago, Illinois: H S Stone and Company, 1903) [hb/]
- Snake Gold: A Tale of Indian Treasure: Of an Ancient Emblem and its Power Over Men To-Day: And of the Hazard of Casa Blanca (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926) [hb/]
collections
- When Eve Was Not Created and Other Stories (Boston, Massachusetts: Small, Maynard and Company, 1901) [coll: hb/]
links
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