William Morton Payne was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 educator, literary critic and writer.

Biography

Payne was the son of Henry Norton Payne, a cotton-mill machinery manufacturer in Newburyport, Massachusetts

Newburyport, Massachusetts

Newburyport is a small coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, 35 miles northeast of Boston. The population was 21,189 at the 2000 census. A historic seaport with a vibrant tourism industry, Newburyport includes part of Plum Island...

, and Emma Tilton. In 1868 his family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he continued his education. From 1874 to 1876 he was an assistant librarian in Chicago Public Library, and from 1876 to 1909 a Chicago high school instructor, teaching economics, civil government and American history. He worked as literary editor of the Chicago Morning News (1884–88) and then the Chicago Evening Journal (1888–92). In 1892 he became an associate editor for The Dial

The Dial

The Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. In the 1880s it was revived as a political magazine...

. As well as writing for The Dial, Payne wrote for The Forum

The Forum (defunct magazine)

The Forum was an American magazine between 1886 and 1930. The magazine printed commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, and poetry. Most editions of the magazine contained pieces written by prominent guest authors who were not employed by the magazine....

, The Bookman

The Bookman (New York)

The Bookman was a literary journal established in 1895 by Dodd, Mead and Company. It drew its name from the phrase, "I am a Bookman," by James Russell Lowell; the phrase regularly appeared on the cover and title page of the bound edition. It was purchased in 1918 by the George H. Doran Company. In...

, Harper's Weekly

Harper's Weekly

Harper's Weekly was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor...

, The Atlantic Monthly

The Atlantic Monthly

The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...

, Music, The New England Magazine

The New England Magazine

The New England Magazine was a monthly literary magazine published in Boston, Massachusetts from 1884 to 1917. It was known as The Bay State Monthly from 1884 to 1886.The magazine was published by J. N...

, and The International Monthly. Between 1900 and 1904 he lectured on English literature at Wisconsin. Kansas and Chicago universities. He was unmarried.

Payne's literary criticism treated modern literature, especially poetry, in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, and the languages of Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

. He translated (1888) Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was a Norwegian writer and the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. Bjørnson is considered as one of The Four Greats Norwegian writers; the others being Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie, and Alexander Kielland...

's historical trilogy Sigurd Slembe and (1895) Henrik Bernhard Jaeger's biography of Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...

 from Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

.

Works

• The New Education, 1884
• Little Leaders, 1895
• (ed.) English in American Universities, 1895

External links