Johnson, Thomas Herbert, 1902-1985

Thomas Herbert Johnson (1902-1985) was born in Bradford, Vermont, the son of Herbert Thomas Johnson (1872-1942) and Myra Burbeck Johnson. He married Catherine Schyler Rice of New York on September 11, 1934, and they had two children, Thomas and Laura.

Thomas briefly attended Dartmouth, and after a year of teaching, started over again at Williams College, class of 1926. He taught at Rutgers, Harvard, NYU, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, and Williams. He joined the faculty of the Lawrenceville School in 1937, serving as chairman of the English Department there from 1944 until he retired in 1967. He was the author of The Oxford Companion to American History, is credited with discovering the Puritan poet Edward Taylor (1664?-1729), co-edited the Literary History of the United States (1948, 3 vols.), and was the editor of six volumes of Emily Dickinson's poetry and letters. His last work was Emily Dickinson: An Interpretative Biography, published in 1955. Thomas H. Johnson died January 3, 1985.