Today relatively few people would recognize an allusion to Harry Thurston Peck, but in the two decades between 1890 and 1910 he was a widely recognized, influential, and controversial figure. He held the respected Anthon Professorship of Latin Language and Literature at Columbia University, authored and edited many books in classical studies, history, travel, children's literature, and literary criticism, and delighted and shocked the public with light, witty essays on a variety of topics ranging from literature and language to popular songs and perfumes. He was associated prominently as staff member or frequent contributor with several journals, including the Commercial Advertiser, Ainslee's Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and Munsey's Magazine. He gained his widest reputation as editor of a new literary monthly, the Bookman, between 1895 and 1907.

Despite his accomplishments as editor of the Bookman and of the Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities (1897), which still stands on the shelves of many scholars...