Biographical Sketch
Robert Allerton Parker (1888-1970), American journalist, editor, biographer and critic, born and raised in Alameda, California, and a graduate of the University of California in 1909, was to reside most of his life in New York. From associate editor of Current Opinion (1914-1920), Parker turned to writing and editing for magazines of art - Arts & Decoration, The Arts, and The International Studio. He undertook several biographies -that of John Humphreys Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community of Perfectionists, A Yankee Saint (1935); Father Divine, The Incredible Messiah (1937); and a study of the Quaker family, the Logan Pearsall Smiths, in The Transatlantic Smiths (1959).
Parker was instrumental in the publication in 1944 of Dr. Gladys I. Wade's book, Thomas Traherne, for which he compiled an exhaustive bibliography. He also wrote an introduction to Ananda Coomaraswamy's essays, Am I My Brother's Keeper?, published in 1947, in an attempt to obtain the Nobel Prize for the Indian mystic.
His interest in the history of the American West led to a much reworked unpublished novel, Ox Train, based on the experiences of the Donner Party. At the time of his death, in 1970, Parker was working on a history of the theater in America, with special attention to vaudeville and to the theater in San Francisco.
From the guide to the Robert Allerton Parker Papers, 1927-1970, (The Bancroft Library)
