Francis Henry Underwood, "the editor who was never the editor" of _The
Atlantic Monthly_, though he was indeed the projector and first
associate editor of that famous magazine, was born at Enfield,
Massachusetts, January 12, 1825, the son of Roswell Underwood. He
spent the year of 1843-1844 at Amherst College, and in the summer of
1844 he came out to Kentucky and settled at Bowling Green as a school
teacher. Underwood read law at Bowling Green and was admitted to the
bar of that town in 1847. On May 18, 1848, he was married to Louisa
Maria Wood, of Taylorsville, Kentucky, to whom he afterwards dedicated
his Kentucky novel. While in Kentucky Underwood wrote verses which he
submitted to N. P. Willis, who was then at Washington. The celebrated
critic wrote him: "Your poetry is as good as Byron's was at the same
stage of progress--correct, and evidently inspired, and capable of
expansion into stuff for fame." None of it, however, has come down to
us. Underwood's intense hatred of slavery caused him to quit Kentucky,
in 1850, after having lived for six years in this State, and to return
to Massachusetts, where he was admitted to the bar of Northampton. He
enlisted in the Free-soil movement with heart and soul. In 1852 he was
clerk of the Massachusetts Senate, which position he left to become
literary adviser for the then leading publishers of New England,
Phillips, Sampson and Company. In 1853 Underwood conceived the idea of
a Free-soil literary magazine, but a publisher's failure delayed its
appearance. In November, 1857, however, the first issue of _The
Atlantic Monthly_ appeared, Dr. Holmes having christened the "baby,"
with James Russell Lowell as editor-in-chief, and Underwood as
assistant editor. Lowell and Underwood were great friends and they
worked together with pleasure and harmony. For two years they were the
editors, when the breaking up of the firm of Phillips, Sampson and
Company, and the passing of the periodical into the hands of Ticknor
and Fields, caused Underwood to resign. From 1859 to 1870 he was clerk
of the Superior Criminal Court of Boston; and from 1861 to 1875 he was
a member of the Boston School Committee. Underwood's first three works
were a _Handbook of English Literature_ (Boston, 1871); _Handbook of
American Literature_ (Boston, 1872); and _Cloud Pictures_ (Boston,
1872), a group of musical stories. Then came his Kentucky novel,
entitled _Lord of Himself_ (Boston, 1874), which was really a series
of pictures of life at Bowling Green in 1844. This tale was well
received by the Kentucky press and public, the background and
characters were declared realistic, and the author's effort to make
something pathetic out of the old system of slavery was smiled at and
dismissed in the general pleasure his story gave. In his imaginary
Kentucky county of Barry, Underwood had a merry time rehabilitating
the past. The character of Arthur Howard is the author himself. _Lord
of Himself_ is a work of high merit, and it does not deserve the
oblivion into which it has fallen. In 1880 Underwood's second novel,
_Man Proposes_, was published, together with his _The True Story of
Exodus_. Two years later his biographies of Longfellow and Lowell were
issued; and in 1883 his study of Whittier was published. In 1885
President Cleveland named Underwood United States Consul at Glasgow;
and three years later the University of Glasgow granted him LL.D.
During Cleveland's second administration Underwood was consul at
Edinburgh. While in Scotland he wrote his last two novels, called
_Quabbin_ (Boston, 1892), and _Dr. Gray's Quest_. In _Quabbin_ he
described his native town of Enfield in much the same manner that he
had years before written of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Underwood died at
Edinburgh, August 8, 1894.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Biographical Catalogue of Amherst College_; _The
Author of "Quabbin,"_ by J. T. Trowbridge (_Atlantic Monthly_,
January, 1895); _The Editor who was Never the Editor_, by Bliss
Perry (_Atlantic Monthly_, November, 1907). Mr. Perry's paper is
especially notable for the great number of letters reproduced
which Underwood received from the celebrities of his time.