As founder of the Saturday Review of Literature and the first chairman of the editorial board of the Book-of-the-Month Club, Henry Seidel Canby played a critical role in expanding the appreciation and readership of American literature over a three-decade period during the early twentieth century. Canby, a Quaker, was known for his genteel manners, tolerance, and a wide breadth of interests. As editor and literary critic he sought to strike a balance between academic criticism and popular taste, between tradition and innovation in American letters. Historian Allan Nevins, long associated with Canby, characterized him as "chief moderator over the literary energies of a whole generation."

Canby's ancestors came to America with William Penn. He grew up in an upper-middle-class milieu in Wilmington, Delaware, the son of Edward Tatnall Canby, a founder and president of the Delaware Trust Company, and Ella Augusta Seidel. Canby attended the Friends School in...