John Lawson Stoddard

Infobox Person
name = John Lawson Stoddard


birth_date = birth date|1850|4|24|df=y
birth_place = Brookline, Massachusetts, USA
death_date = death date and age|1931|6|5|1850|4|24 [Birth and death dates taken from "American Authors and Books".]
death_place =
education = Williams College & Yale Divinity School
occupation =
spouse =
parents =
children =

John Lawson Stoddard (1850-1931) was an American writer, hymn writer and lecturer who gained popularity through his travelogues.

Biography

Stoddard was born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1850. In 1871 he graduate of Williams College, then two years of theology at Yale Divinity School. After that he taught Latin and French at Boston Latin School. [Dates and schooling from the biographical material in "John L. Stoddard's Lectures", 1905.]

He began traveling around the world in 1874, and published "Red-Letter Days Abroad" in 1884. He turned his experiences into a series of popular lectures delivered throughout North America. These lectures were periodically published in book form as "John L. Stoddard's Lectures" and eventually numbered ten volumes and five supplements (1897-1898). [Book dates taken from "American Authors and Books".] The books include numerous illustrations derived from the immense catalog of photographs taken by Stoddard, and cover every subject, from art and architecture, to archeaology and natural history. The books were immensely popular in their day and many copies still survive. Later in life, Stoddard also published poetry, as well as books on religious subjects.

Stoddard was a proponent of the restoration of the Jews to Israel. In Stoddards's Lectures he told the Jews, “You are a people without a country; there is a country without a people. Be united. Fulfill the dreams of your old poets and patriarchs. Go back, go back to the land of Abraham.” A sentiment popularized as "A land without a people for a people without a land."

The "John L. Stoddard's Lectures"

* v. 1 Norway. Switzerland. Athens. Venice.
* v. 2 Constantinople. Jerusalem. Egypt.
* v. 3 Japan (two lectures). China.
* v. 4 India (two lectures). The Passion play.
* v. 5 Paris. La belle France. Spain.
* v. 6 Berlin. Vienna. St. Petersburg. Moscow.
* v. 7 The Rhine. Belgium. Holland. Mexico.
* v. 8 Florence. Naples. Rome.
* v. 9 Scotland. England. London.
* v. 10 Southern California. Grand cañon of the Colorado River. Yellowstone National Park.

Supplementary volumes:
* no. 1 Ireland (two lectures). Denmark. Sweden.
* no. 2 Canada (two lectures). Malta. Gibraltar.
* no. 3 South Tyrol. Around Lake Garda. The Dolomites.
* no. 4 Sicily. Genoa. A drive through the Engadine.
* no. 5 Lake Como. The upper Danube. Bohemia.

Notes

References

* "John L. Stoddard's Lectures" (1905)
* "American Authors and Books: 1640 to Present Day" Third Revised Edition, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York. (Original Editors W. J. Burke and Will D. Howe)

Further reading

* "John L. Stoddard" by D. Crane Taylor (1935).

External links

*
*cite book
title=Lectures, Illustrated and Embellished with Views of the World's Famous ...
author=John Lawson Stoddard
year=1899
publisher=Balch
isbn=
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=G9VavjjqSTkC&dq=john+l+stoddard&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=1LZJ-hT6NE&sig=OYNx56kdGcBrEHCqVBt6L-x6YtU#PPA24,M1