SOURCE: Cowan, S. A. “Parrington, Woolley, and Reality: A Note on Trilling's ‘Of This Time, Of That Place’.” English Language Notes 26, no. 2 (December 1988): 56-9.

In the following essay, Cowan speculates that the character of Frederic Woolley from “Of This Time, Of This Place” was based on the American literary historian V. L. Parrington.

Lionel Trilling's commentary on “Of This Time, Of That Place” makes plain that two characters—Ferdinand Tertan and Theodore Blackburn—had their origins in actual students Trilling had taught at Columbia College.¹ In addition, the story leaves one with the impression that the instructor, Joseph Howe, is to a considerable degree a fictionalized projection of Trilling himself. In this tale, as in the author's other early stories recounting a young intellectual's experiences in the academic world, the autobiographical tone is unmistakable.² The reader, then, who supposes that a real person was in Trilling's thoughts when...