Statue of Historic Figure: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. - Boston, MA

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Boston, MA

N 42° 20.974 W 071° 04.644

Short Description: 

A bronze bust of poet, physician, and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. is located in the Bates Reading Room of the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library at 700 Boylston St., Boston,

Long Description:

The life-size bronze bust of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. depicts Holmes from the mid-chest up. He is wearing a bow tie, vest and suit jacket. The bust rests on a 4' high black pedestal. A metal sign attached to the top of the pedestal is inscribed:

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

1809 - 1894

BY RICHARD EDWIN BROOKS

PLACED IN THE LIBRARY BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF BOSTON

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was a polymath. He was a poet, novelist, biographer, essayist, and a physician. Born on August 29, 1809 in Cambridge, MA, he graduated from the Phillips Academy, Harvard College, and Harvard Medical School. He wrote poetry at an early age and his most famous poem "Old Ironsides" was published when he was only 21, in 1830. The poem was influential is the saving of the USS Constitution, now the oldest commissioned ship in the world.

Holmes, along with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, and James Russell Lowell were members of the Fireside Poets. A group of American poets whose works rivaled those of English poets. He often published his works in The Atlantic Monthly.

Poetry:

Old Ironsides 
The Chambered Nautilus 
"Songs in Many Keys 
Poems 

Medical and psychological studies:

Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence 
Mechanism in Thought and Morals 

Table-talk books:

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table 
The Professor at the Breakfast-Table
The Poet at the Breakfast-Table 
Over the Teacups 

Novels:

Elsie Venner 
The Guardian Angel 
A Mortal Antipathy 

Articles:

"The Stereoscope and the Stereograph", The Atlantic Monthly, volume 6 (1859)
"Sun-painting and sun-sculpture", The Atlantic Monthly, volume 8 (July 1861)
"Doings of the sun-beam", The Atlantic Monthly, volume 12 (July 1863)

Biographies and travelogue:

John Lothrop Motley, A Memoir 
Ralph Waldo Emerson 
Our Hundred Days in Europe