Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809. He
studied at Phillips Academy, Andover, and later at Harvard College,
where he graduated in the famous class of 1829. He tried law for a year,
but gave this up for medicine. In 1833 he went abroad, returning in 1835
for a medical degree at Harvard. He at once began the active practice of
his profession, but accepted a professorship at Dartmouth in 1838. He
remained there only a short time, coming back again to Boston, where he
married and resumed his work as a physician. In 1847 he became Parkman
Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Harvard, and held this position
until 1882. In 1857, through the influence of James Russell Lowell, he
began to contribute regularly to the _Atlantic Monthly_. After 1882 he
devoted himself almost exclusively to writing and lecturing. He died in
1894 in Boston.
While Holmes is best known as the author of _The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table_ and other prose works, he published numerous poems,
most of them humorous in tone. Many of them were written for specific
occasions, and as such are distinguished for their wit and cleverness
rather than for strong emotion or profound thought.