An architect of happiness

Henry Jackson Van Dyke was a Presbyterian Minister, his father himself being a Presbyterian Clergyman inspired Van Dyke a lot, though he was not a “model child”, his father always commented, “Paul was born good, but Henry was saved by grace”. Van dyke with his friend W.S Macy went to Red River Valley wheat farms In September 1879 where he saw problems with large agricultural systems that were depleting the land and exploiting migrant labor. With his friend Macy he also did an article for Harper's Monthly Magazine, in the May 1880 issue. He was already a part of the literary field by the year 1888 with his sermon "National Sin of Literary Piracy," which attacked the American habit of printing pirated copies of foreign books, quite ironically, Van Dyke's first copy of a book by Tennyson, Enoch Arden, ect. (1864), was a pirated edition, which he had purchased for fifty cents when he was just fourteen. Van Dyke ranked Tennyson 3rd among the English poets after William Shakespeare and John Milton, who proved to be a guiding factor during his life. Relaying an incident from his life, in 1889 when his first book of criticism, The Poetry of Tennyson, was published, he sent his collection of critical articles on Tennyson to the eighty-year-old poet, to which Tennyson responded with a letter of thanks along with some autobiographical notes, and corrections in the 2nd edition. Van Dyke visited Tennyson on 18th August 1892, While Tennyson took his afternoon nap, Van Dyke listened to recordings of Tennyson reading his own poetry, after which Tennyson personally read Maud to him. This incident lead into Van Dyke changing his opinion of the poem in the 3rd edition of his book.

 Henry van dyke’s “Little Rivers” (1895), was a collection of essays which talked about the value of the outdoors in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, and John Muir. Often Van Dyke's short stories resembled parables, which can be seen in his “The Story of the Other Wise Man” (1896), which was actually read as a Christmas sermon in his church and which was further published in Harper's Monthly Christmas issue of 1892. Later in life, Van Dyke agreed to accept a chair as Professor of English Literature at Princeton in 1900. Henry Van Dyke's status as a literary critic was good throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, became gradually less in the 1920s. Some of van dyke’s work remained popular with the general public but most critics view him as a man of “Victorian taste” whose thinking toward the art of literature was too narrow and whose Christianity sat perhaps too easily on his shoulders, yet, the man Helen Keller called "an architect of happiness" achieved a lot of recognition for his work, he was an influential and powerful speaker and writer who tried to narrow down the gap created by World War I and contend positively with a world.

Some of Henry Van Dyke’s works include:

• The Reality of Religion. New York: Scribner’s, 1884.
• The Story of the Psalms. New York: Scribner’s, 1887.
• The Gospel of an Age of Doubt. New York: Macmillan, 1896.
• The First Christmas Tree. New York: Scribner’s, 1897.
• The Friendly Year. New York: Scribner’s, 1900.
• The Ruling Passion. New York: Scribner’s, 1901.
• The Blue Flower. New York: Scribner’s, 1902.
• Days Off, and Other Digressions. New York: Scribner’s, 1907.
• Fighting for Peace. New York: Scribner’s, 1917.
• Half Told Tales. New York: Scribner’s, 1925.
• The Man Behind the Book: Essays in Understanding. New York: Scribner’s, 1929.