Holland, Josiah Gilbert

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

(1819–81) writer, editor; born in Belchertown, Mass. Although he graduated from the Berkshire Medical College in 1844, he left medicine first for teaching and then for publishing. He spent most of his career as an editor at the Springfield Republican (Mass.), where he worked under Samuel Bowles, son of the founder-publisher of the same name. Holland worked full-time at the Republican from 1849 to 1857, after which he concentrated on his writing. His many books, many collections of Republican columns, include A History of Western Massachusetts (1885) and Timothy Titcomb's Letters to Young People (1858), as well as volumes of poetry and a number of novels. In 1870 he was a founder and the first editor of Scribner's Monthly (later the Century). Widely read during his lifetime, he has been little read since then.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.