The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Trent, William Peterfield

TRENT, William Peterfield, American man of letters: b. Richmond, Va., 10 Nov. 1862. After study at the University of Virginia and at Johns Hopkins University, he was professor of English in the University of the South (1888-1900) and dean of its academic department (1894-1900). From 1892 to 1900 he was editor of the Sewanee Review, and since 1 July 1900 has been professor of English literature at Columbia University. He has published &lsquo;Life of William Gilmore Simms&rsquo; (1892); &lsquo;English Culture in Virginia&rsquo; (1889); &lsquo;Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime&rsquo; (1897); &lsquo;Robert E. Lee&rsquo; (1899); &lsquo;John Milton&rsquo; (1899); &lsquo;The Authority of Criticism&rsquo; (1899); &lsquo;War and Civilization&rsquo; (1901); &lsquo;The Progress of the United States in the Century&rsquo; (1901); &lsquo;A History of American Literature 1807-1865&rsquo; (1903): &lsquo;Greatness in Literature and Other Literary Addresses&rsquo; (1905); &lsquo;Longfellow and other Papers&rsquo; (1910); &lsquo;Defoe &mdash; How to Know Him&rsquo; (1916), etc. He has also edited &lsquo;Select Poems of Milton&rsquo; (1895); &lsquo;Essays of Macaulay&rsquo; (1897); &lsquo;Poems and Tales of Edgar Allan Poe&rsquo; (1898); &lsquo;Balzac's Comédie Humaine&rsquo; (1900); &lsquo;Southern Writers, Selections in Prose and Verse&rsquo; (1905), and has collaborated in numerous literary undertakings, e.g., &lsquo;Colonial Prose and Poetry,&rsquo; editions of Shakespeare and Thackeray and the &lsquo;Cambridge History of American Literature.&rsquo; Since 1905 his chief work has lain in English history and literature 1680-1730, with special attention to Defoe, of whom he has written a biography and bibliography in 10 volumes still in manuscript.