² Joan Shelley Rubin identified the efforts of certain popularizers of highbrow culture in her book The Making of Middlebrow Culture (Chapel Hill, 1992).Google Scholar While she does not discuss Loeb, his library parallels in meaningful ways those projects she does describe.

³ Many historians have identified a break in the early twentieth century between a Victorian world and what they have called the “modern” world. While dating this break is imprecise, the rupture occurred either before or immediately after World War I depending on the cause these various historians identify. Among intellectual historians, the best representative is May, Henry, The End of American Innocence (New York, 1959).Google Scholar More recent discussions of the birth of the modern in the early twentieth century include Stansell, Christine, American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century (New York, 2000)Google Scholar and Dumenil, LynnThe Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920_s (New York, 1995).Google Scholar Joseph Kett's book on self-education in American history makes the claim that the genteel tradition was “in shambles” by 1910. See The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America, 1750-1990 (Stanford, 1994).Google Scholar Loeb's project and those of other middlebrow advocates, however, suggests continuity. Many continued to think of culture in terms of the genteel tradition long after it was supposed to have been eclipsed by the avant-garde.

⁴ Biographical information about Loeb and his immediate family comes from a number of sources. Standard biographical dictionaries were helpful in constructing the narrative of Loeb's life. See Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 21 supplement 1 (New York, 1944), 503–04Google Scholar and The Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists (Westport, 1994), 368–70.Google Scholar Obituaries were also helpful. See for example, the notices in the following: “Obituary Note,” The Publishers' Weekly 123 (June 10, 1933): 1887Google Scholar ; The Times (of London), June 2, 1933Google Scholar and The Times, June 3, 1933. Loeb's niece left a memoir that provided rich insight into the Loeb family. See Warburg, Frieda Schiff, Reminiscences of a Long Life (New York, 1956), 11–19Google Scholar passim. For Loeb's family circle see Chernow, Ron, The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family (New York, 1993)Google Scholar , and Birmingham, Stephen, Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York (New York, 1967).Google Scholar Kuhn, Loeb and Company published a commemorative history of the firm celebrating its eighty-eighth year in business. See Investment Banking Through Four Generations (New York, 1955)Google Scholar.

⁵ , Warburg, Reminiscences of a Long Life, 19.Google Scholar

⁶ , Chernow, The Warburgs, 11Google Scholar , and Birmingham, Our Crowd, 254.

⁷ These details were compiled from the sources listed in note 4.

⁸ , Chernow, The Warburgs, 77–80.Google Scholar

⁹ The Loebs were like many established German Jewish families in America who sought to distance themselves from the more recently arrived Eastern European and Russian Jews. On the Loebs' agnosticism, see , Chernow, The Warburgs, 55Google Scholar and , Birmingham, Our Crowd, 175.Google Scholar Birmingham relates the anecdote of Loeb's mother telling her children to avoid running to the subway door as the train was stopping lest others think that they were “pushy Jews.” See page 291.

¹⁰ This and the preceding paragraph draws on a number of secondary sources that describe the careers of Jewish Americans in the early twentieth century. In addition to , Chernow, The WarburgsGoogle Scholar and , Birmingham, Our CrowdGoogle Scholar , see Steel's, Ronald magisterial biography, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (New York, 1980), 186–96Google Scholar and Hollinger, David A., “Ethnic Diversity, Cosmopolitanism, and the Emergence of the American Liberal Intelligentsia,” in In the American Province: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ideas (Baltimore, 1985), esp. 58–66Google Scholar.

¹¹ Loeb's affection for Norton is clear in the few letters they exchanged. Loeb sent him news from Europe concerning his collections and the researches he was pursuing. On the occasion of Norton's eightieth birthday, Loeb commissioned a terra cotta bowl cast from an original mould from his collection of ancient pottery. “It is an attempt to show the close relationship of Arrentine potter's art to that of his fellow-craftsmen in the precious metals.” See Loeb to Charles Eliot Norton, November 15, 1907, bMS AM 1088 (4302) Houghton Library, Harvard University. The recent biography of Norton provides a thorough discussion of his place within the intellectual and cultural circles of the late nineteenth century. See Turner, James, The Liberal Education of Charles Eliot Norton (Baltimore, 1999)Google Scholar.

¹² Charles Eliot Norton to John Ruskin, February 10, 1874, Norton, Sara and Howe, M. A. De-Wolfe, eds., Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, with biographical Comment vol. 2 (Boston, 1913), 34–35.Google Scholar

¹³ Arnold, Matthew, Literature and Dogma (New York, 1881), xiGoogle Scholar . James Turner notes a subtle distinction between Arnold's “timeless” definition of culture and what he sees as Norton's appreciation of culture's evolution and progress. Still, they would have agreed with Loeb that the ancients represented exemplary models for contemporaries to heed. See , Turner, Liberal Education of Charles Eliot Norton, 257Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Useful works include , Kett, Pursuit of Knowledge Under DifficultiesGoogle Scholar , Bode, Carl, The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the American Mind (Carbondale, 1956)Google Scholar and Scott, Donald, “The Popular Lecture and the Creation of a Public in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of American History 66 (1980): 791–809CrossRefGoogle Scholar . On Chautauqua see Reiser, Andrew C., The Chautauqua Moment: Protestants, Progressives, and the Culture of Modern Liberalism (New York, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ , Rieser, The Chautauqua Moment, 103.Google Scholar

¹⁶ There is a small but growing literature on the classics in American culture. See for example Winterer, Caroline, The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910 (Baltimore, 2002)Google Scholar , McManus, Barbara F., Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics (New York, 1997)Google Scholar , Reinhold, Meyer, Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States (Detroit, 1984)Google Scholar , Reinhold, Meyer and Eadie, John William, Classical Traditions in Early America: Essays (Ann Arbor, 1976)Google Scholar and Middlekauff, Robert, Ancients and Axioms: Secondary Education in Eighteenth-Century New England (New Haven, 1963)Google Scholar . The International Society for the Classical Tradition, founded in 1991, publishes The International Journal of the Classical Tradition . My dissertation, “Et Tu, America? The Rise and Fall of Latin in Schools, Society, and the Culture of the Educated Man” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2000)Google Scholar , explores the debate over Latin and links its fate to evolving definitions of gentlemanly behavior and training.

¹⁷ , Rieser, The Chautauqua Moment, 102, 175.Google Scholar

¹⁸ The quotation comes from the Library's first publisher, the Macmillan Company, in a printed circular announcing the series. The editors of the Classical Weekly cited it in their notice of the Library's publication. See “The Loeb Classical Library,” The Classical Weekly 5 (February 17, 1912): 126Google Scholar.

¹⁹ “Two Hundred Nights with ‘Loeb’,” The Literary Digest 95 (December 17, 1927): 28–29.Google Scholar

²⁰ Whicher, G. M., “A Literary Monument,” The Outlook 133 (April 11, 1923) 668.Google Scholar

²¹ Shorey, Paul, “The Loeb Classics,” The Harvard Graduates' Magazine 36 (March 1928): 334–35.Google Scholar

²² James Loeb to Oswald Garrison Villard, November 20, 1911, bMS. A M 1323 (2309), Houghton Library, Harvard University [Hereafter, Correspondence].

²³ , Rubin, Making of Middlebrow Culture, 28-29 and 100–03.Google Scholar

²⁴ Correspondence, Villard, Loeb to, April 23, 1928.Google Scholar

²⁵ For Page's career see Rudd, Niall, T. E. Page: Schoolmaster Extraordinary (Bristol, 1981)Google Scholar , and these reminiscences: Fletcher, Frank, After Many Days: A Schoolmaster's Memories (London, 1937), 244–53Google Scholar ; Irvine, A. L., Sixty Years at School (Winchester, 1958), 69–71Google Scholar ; Lancaster, Osbert, With an Eye to the Future (London, 1967), 50–51Google Scholar ; Storrs, Ronald, Orientations (London, 1945), 10–11Google Scholar ; and Swinnerton, Frank, Swinnerton: An Autobiography (New York, 1936), 247–50Google Scholar.

²⁶ Among the many works to his credit is a thin volume entitled The Teaching of Latin and Greek wherein he makes what had become the well-worn argument that the classics trained the mind while they disciplined the passions. (See page 3). See also his volume Classical Work and Method in the Twentieth Century (London, 1908)Google Scholar . Clearly, as headmaster, he focused his energies on pedagogical concerns. In this work, he advocated teaching Latin and Greek by using the Direct Method, the same method used by teachers of modern languages.

²⁷ Correspondence, Villard, Loeb to, April 29, 1911.Google Scholar

²⁸ Figures on Latin enrollment come from Report of the Commissioner of Educationfor the Year 1909-1910, Vol. 2, Bureau of Educatio n (Washington, DC, 1911), 1174Google Scholar , Table 130.

²⁹ Norwood, Gilbert, “The Loeb Classical Library,” Living Age 317 (June 23, 1923): 718.Google Scholar For a similar argument, see , Shorey, “The Loeb Classics,” 336Google Scholar.

³⁰ “The Loeb Classical Library,” The Nation 93 (November 9, 1911): 438.Google Scholar

³¹ , Martial, Epigrams, trans., Ker, Walter C. A., vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA, 1920), 260–61Google Scholar and 72-73. Ker's comments on Martial are found in the introduction to volume 1 of the Epigrams published in 1919, pages xv-xvi. The more recent Loeb translation of the Epigrams (1993) displays none of the modesty that restrained Ker. The web site for the Loeb series at Harvard University Press notes, in a brief history, that translators signed contracts requiring them to shield readers from offensive passages. See http://www.hup.harvard.edu/loeb/history.html. According to my email exchange (11-08-04) with Margaretta Fulton, the current administrative editor of the Loeb series, HUP does not have these early records.

³² Correspondence, Villard, Loeb to, November 20, 1911.Google Scholar

³³ Correspondence, Villard, Loeb to, May 25, 1925.Google Scholar

³⁴ Hall, Max, Harvard University Press: A History (Cambridge, 1986), 64, 169.Google Scholar When Loeb died in 1933, he bequeathed the series to Harvard University and established a foundation (with §300,000) to support classical scholarship. Harvard continues to publish the series.

³⁵ Correspondence, Villard, Loeb to, October 1, 1922Google Scholar , January 30, 1923, July 29, 1924 and November 12, 1924.

³⁶ Correspondence, Villard, Loeb to, July 29, 1924Google Scholar . Loeb's efforts to encourage reviews in The Nation are amply documented in the correspondence between him and Villard. That Villard saw this relationship as reciprocal is evident in his responses where he asks Loeb for advertising dollars.

³⁷ Lears, Jackson, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York, 1994), chapter 6Google Scholar , “The Perfectionist Project”, 162-95 passim. Warren Sussman stressed the emergence of “personality” as an important characteristic of modern culture. See his essay , “‘Personality’ and the Making of Twentieth-Century Culture,” in Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1984), 271–85Google Scholar.

³⁸ , Rubin, Making of Middlebrow Culture, 98–100.Google Scholar

³⁹ Correspondence, Villard, Loeb to, June 11, 1923.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Paul R. Gorman illuminates the critique intellectuals made of popular culture in Left Intellectuals and Popular Culture in Twentieth-Century America (Chapel Hill, 1996)Google Scholar , esp. ch. 2 and 3. See also Cotkin, George, Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture, 1880-1900 (New York, 1992), esp. ch. 6Google Scholar . Levine's argument about cultural hierarchy, of course, has its critics. Joseph Horowitz, for example, notes that culture was less hierarchical and more “confused” than Levine admits. See his article “Music and the Gilded Age: Social Control and Sacralization Revisited” in Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 3 (July 2004): 227–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹ Loeb's quote comes from his short untitled article published with the proceedings of a conference on the value of Latin and Greek held in 1906. See , Kelsey, Francis W, ed., Latin and Greek in American Education, with Symposia on the Value of Humanistic Studies (New York, 1911), 215CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² “The Loeb Classical Library,” The Nation 93 (November 9, 1911): 438.Google Scholar

⁴³ Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence ed. Nowlin, Michael (Peterborough, ON, 2002), 67.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Historians have identified nostalgia as a historical force particularly during the period following World War I. Though Loeb left the United States in 1905 and never returned, he took part in this nostalgia for an American world more orderly and innocent than the one shaping the 1920_s. For the use of nostalgia as an interpretive device see Levine, Lawrence, “Progress and Nostalgia: The Self Image of the Nineteen Twenties,” in The Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History, ed. Levine, Lawrence (New York, 1993): 189–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and Lasch, Christopher, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York, 1991), ch. 3Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ , Norwood, “The Loeb Classical library,” 722.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Eliot's ideas concerning the elective system are discussed by Hawkins, Hugh, Between Harvard and America: The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot (New York, 1972), 90, 92–94Google Scholar and Townsend, Kim, Manhood at Harvard: William James & Others (Cambridge, 1996), 121–25Google Scholar . Two articles which Eliot wrote prior to his inauguration are important statements of his educational philosophy. See “The New Education: Its Organization,” Atlantic Monthly 23 (February 1869): 203–20Google Scholar and (March 1869): 358-67. For a brief introduction to Dewey's ideas start with his book Experience & Education (New York, 1938)Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ See Loeb's contribution to Kelsey, , ed., Latin and Greek in American Education, 214Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 216.

⁴⁹ Ibid. There is a large literature linking consumerism with modern culture, a link Loeb perceived and resisted. A brief gloss on these issues is provided by , Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism, ch. 5Google Scholar , “Consuming Culture,” 101-29. Key to this transformation was the increasing sophistication of the advertising field which promoted the sort of consumerism Loeb lamented. See Marchand, Roland, Advertising the American Dream: Making Wayfor Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley, 1985)Google Scholar , Strasser, Susan, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (Washington, 1995)Google Scholar , and , Lears, Fables of AbundanceGoogle Scholar . An enlightening biographical study o f the rise of advertising in the twentieth-century is Tye, Larry, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & the Birth of Public Relations (New York, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ This discussion of Norton's teaching comes from James Turner's new biography of him. Turner quotes at length a passage from Norton's lecture notes where he summarize d the advantages of studying the Greeks. Loeb's sympathy for Norton's ideas is clear from his own writings about the Greeks and Romans. See , Turner, The Liberal Education of Charles Eliot Norton, 260–62Google Scholar.

⁵¹ The literature on leisure is growing as scholars become interested in vacations. See Aron, Cindy, Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States (New York, 1999)Google Scholar . The two leading works on popular leisure pursuits are Kasson, John, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1978)Google Scholar , and Nasaw, David, Going Out: The Vase and Fall of Public Amusements (New York, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁵² See Loeb's contribution to Kelsey, , ed., Latin and Greek in American Education, 217Google Scholar.

⁵³ Rouse, W. H. D., “Machines or Mind?” Classical Weekly 6 (January 11, 1913): 82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁴ See note 16.

⁵⁵ , Rouse, “Machines or Mind?”, 85–86Google Scholar . The Latin, translated as “a few swimming in the vast deep,” comes from Virgil's Aeneid, book 1, line 118.

⁵⁶ See the contributions of Sadler, Herbert C., “The Place of the Humanities in the Training of Engineers,”Google Scholar and Evans, Lynden, “The Study of Greek and Latin as a Preparation for the Study of Law,” inGoogle ScholarKelsey, , ed., Latin and Greek in American Education, 103-04 and 136Google Scholar , respectively.

⁵⁷ Loeb quoted in “The Making of the Loeb Classical Library,” Living Age 325 (April 25, 1925): 215Google Scholar . Loeb no doubt invested the classics with a spiritual dimension to distinguish them from modern productions he scorned. Historians such as Levine have used similar sentiments to assume a relationship between the elite and a process of “sacralization” at the turn of the century. It is important to note, however, that viewing certain cultural artifacts (the classics, the symphony, the opera, etc.) as sacred crossed class lines. That Loeb often spoke of these texts as having spiritual qualities does not mean that others, from different social classes, could not have similarly described them.

⁵⁸ , Norwood, “The Loeb Classical Library,” 721.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ For Masson's quote see Benton, Megan, “Too Many Books: Book Ownership and Cultural Identity in the 1920_s,” American Quarterly 49 (June 1997): 279–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Incidentally, such use of books continues. Martha Stewart, for example, purchased a set of Loeb's green Greek volumes to fill out a shelf in her daughter's East Hampton cottage. A photograph of them as a display element can be found on page 116 of the May 2002 Martha Stewart Living magazine.

⁶⁰ Sedgwick, Henry Dwight, “The Classics Again: A Dialogue Concerning the Loeb Classical Library,” The Atlantic Monthly 112 Quly 1913): 34.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Ibid., 35.