Through his reviews and articles in the Bookman, Munsey's Magazine, and Cosmopolitan, as well as his several collections of essays, Harry Thurston Peck instructed a great number of American readers at the turn of the century on the importance of the realistic and naturalistic movements and kept them abreast of the latest developments in Continental literature. When he addressed the American literary tradition, he was less successful.

Peck was born on 24 November 1856 in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Harry and Harriet Elizabeth Thurston Peck. After his graduation in 1881 from Columbia College, where he edited the college paper, Acta Columbiana, he studied classical philology in Paris, Berlin, and Rome, returning to the United States to receive a Ph.D. in 1883 from Cumberland University and in 1884 a L.H.D. from Columbia. In 1882 he married Cornelia M. Dawbarn, by whom he had two daughters. That same year he was appointed...