Edward Page Mitchell
Encyclopedia
Edward Page Mitchell was an American editorial and short story
writer for the New York Sun
, a daily newspaper. He became that newspaper's editor in 1897, succeeding Charles Anderson Dana
. Mitchell retired in 1926, a year before dying of a cerebral hemorrhage. Decades after his death, Mitchell was recognized as a major figure in the early development of the science fiction
genre
. Mitchell wrote fiction about a man rendered invisible by scientific means ("The Crystal Man", published in 1881) before H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man
, wrote about a time-travel machine ("The Clock that Went Backward") before Wells's The Time Machine
, wrote about faster-than-light travel ("The Tachypomp
"; now perhaps his best-known work) in 1874, a thinking computer and a cyborg
in 1879 ("The Ablest Man in the World
"), and also wrote the earliest known stories about matter transmission or teleportation
("The Man without a Body", 1877) and a superior mutant
("Old Squids and Little Speller"). "Exchanging Their Souls" (1877) is one of the earliest fictional accounts of mind transfer
.
The gradual discovery of Mitchell and his work is a direct result of the publication in 1973 of a book-length anthology of his stories, compiled by Sam Moskowitz
with a detailed introduction by Moskowitz giving much information about Mitchell's personal life. Because Mitchell's stories were not by-lined on original publication, nor indexed, Moskowitz expended major effort to track down and collect these works by an author whom Moskowitz cited as "the lost giant of American science fiction".
Mitchell's stories show the strong influence of Edgar Allan Poe
. Among other traits, Mitchell shares Poe's habit of giving a basically serious and dignified fictional character a jokey name, such as "Professor Dummkopf" in Mitchell's "The Man Without a Body". Since Mitchell's fictions were originally published in newspapers, typeset in the same format as news articles and not identified as fiction, he may possibly have used this device to signal to his readers that this text should not be taken seriously.
, to a house on Fifth Avenue directly across from the future site of the New York Public Library
's main branch.
In 1863 he witnessed the Draft Riots, later describing them in his memoirs. In the aftermath of the bloody riots, Mitchell's father moved the family to Tar River, North Carolina. While living there, as a boy of fourteen, young Mitchell's letters to The Bath Times (his birthplace's local paper) were his first published writing.
The one great personal tragedy of Mitchell's life was a bizarre accident in 1872, when he was twenty years old. On a train journey from Bowdoin College
to Bath, Maine, a hot cinder from the engine's smokestack flew in through the window and struck Mitchell's left eye, blinding it. After several weeks, while doctors attempted to restore this eye's sight, Mitchell's uninjured right eye suddenly underwent sympathetic blindness, rendering him completely sightless. His burnt left eye eventually healed and regained its sight, but his uninjured right eye remained blind. The sightless eye was later removed surgically, and replaced with a prosthetic glass eye. While recovering from this surgery, Mitchell wrote his story "The Tachypomp".
Mitchell first became a professional journalist at the Daily Advertiser in Boston
, Massachusetts, where his mentor was Edward Everett Hale
, now also recognized as an early author of science fiction.
Mitchell had a life-long interest in the supernatural and paranormal, and several of his early newspaper pieces are factual investigations of alleged hauntings, usually determined (by Mitchell) to have a normal explanation. Mitchell later interviewed and befriended Madame Blavatsky
, the well-known alleged psychic, yet (despite their friendship) he considered her a fraud.
Mitchell's entree to the New York Sun, where he eventually found long-term employment, was his ghost story "Back from that Bourne". Fiction published as fact, this purported to be the true account of a recently deceased resident of Maine returning as a ghost. One of Mitchell's later stories, "An Uncommon Sort of Spectre", is one of fiction's earliest examples of a ghost from the future. Many of Mitchell's fictions—published originally as factual newspaper articles—deal with ghosts or other supernatural events, and would now be considered works of fantasy rather than science fiction.
Mitchell often inserted more than one innovative concept into a science-fiction tale. His 1879 story "The Senator's Daughter", set in the future year 1937, contains several technological predictions which were daring for the time: travel by pneumatic tube, electrical heating, newspapers printed in the home by electrical transmission, food-pellet concentrates, international broadcasts, and the suspended animation
of a living human being through freezing (cryogenics
). This same story contains several social predictions: votes for American women, a war between the United States and China (with China winning), and interracial marriage.
In 1874, Mitchell married Annie Sewall Welch. During the early years of Mitchell's tenure at the Sun, they lived in an apartment on Madison Avenue, where the marriage produced two sons. (The second son was born during a visit to relatives in Bath, Maine.) The need for larger quarters brought the couple to Bloomfield, New Jersey, where they lived while their next two sons were born. By all accounts, Mitchell's family life was happy. One of Mitchell's colleagues at the Sun was that paper's night editor Garrett P. Serviss
, who would also become an important figure in early science fiction. Mitchell was a long time resident of Glen Ridge, New Jersey
and is credited with founding the community: he moved to this region when it was comparatively unpopulated, and his local influence led others to build houses there.
On July 20, 1903, Mitchell became editor-in-chief of the New York Sun, at that time the leading newspaper in the United States. In 1912, following his first wife's death, he married Ada M. Burroughs; this marriage produced a fifth son. Mitchell remained a popular and respected figure in American journalism until his death (apparently from a heart attack) while visiting New London, Connecticut. He was buried in his beloved Glen Ridge. During his lifetime, his journalism paid him well, and he clearly had no desire for public recognition, since he had many opportunities to achieve this yet never attempted to do so.
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
writer for the New York Sun
New York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
, a daily newspaper. He became that newspaper's editor in 1897, succeeding Charles Anderson Dana
Charles Anderson Dana
Charles Anderson Dana was an American journalist, author, and government official, best known for his association with Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War and his aggressive political advocacy after the war....
. Mitchell retired in 1926, a year before dying of a cerebral hemorrhage. Decades after his death, Mitchell was recognized as a major figure in the early development of the science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
. Mitchell wrote fiction about a man rendered invisible by scientific means ("The Crystal Man", published in 1881) before H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man
The Invisible Man
The Invisible Man is a science fiction novella by H.G. Wells published in 1897. Wells' novel was originally serialised in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, and published as a novel the same year...
, wrote about a time-travel machine ("The Clock that Went Backward") before Wells's The Time Machine
The Time Machine
The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895 for the first time and later adapted into at least two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations. It indirectly inspired many more works of fiction...
, wrote about faster-than-light travel ("The Tachypomp
Tachypomp
"The Tachypomp" is a short story by Edward Page Mitchell originally published January 1874 anonymously in The Sun, a New York daily newspaper.-Publishing information:...
"; now perhaps his best-known work) in 1874, a thinking computer and a cyborg
Cyborg
A cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S...
in 1879 ("The Ablest Man in the World
The Ablest Man in the World
"The Ablest Man in the World" is a short story by Edward Page Mitchell. It was written in 1879.-Plot summary:Dr. Fisher is spending his July holiday in Baden. While he is there, Baron Savitch, a rising Russian politician, is said to be ill by one of the hotel staff. Fisher is led into the baron’s...
"), and also wrote the earliest known stories about matter transmission or teleportation
Teleportation
Teleportation is the fictional or imagined process by which matter is instantaneously transferred from one place to another.Teleportation may also refer to:*Quantum teleportation, a method of transmitting quantum data...
("The Man without a Body", 1877) and a superior mutant
Mutant
In biology and especially genetics, a mutant is an individual, organism, or new genetic character, arising or resulting from an instance of mutation, which is a base-pair sequence change within the DNA of a gene or chromosome of an organism resulting in the creation of a new character or trait not...
("Old Squids and Little Speller"). "Exchanging Their Souls" (1877) is one of the earliest fictional accounts of mind transfer
Mind transfer
Whole brain emulation or mind uploading is the hypothetical process of transferring or copying a conscious mind from a brain to a non-biological substrate by scanning and mapping a biological brain in detail and copying its state into a computer system or another computational device...
.
The gradual discovery of Mitchell and his work is a direct result of the publication in 1973 of a book-length anthology of his stories, compiled by Sam Moskowitz
Sam Moskowitz
Sam Moskowitz was an early fan and organizer of interest in science fiction and, later, a writer, critic, and historian of the field.-Biography:...
with a detailed introduction by Moskowitz giving much information about Mitchell's personal life. Because Mitchell's stories were not by-lined on original publication, nor indexed, Moskowitz expended major effort to track down and collect these works by an author whom Moskowitz cited as "the lost giant of American science fiction".
Mitchell's stories show the strong influence of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
. Among other traits, Mitchell shares Poe's habit of giving a basically serious and dignified fictional character a jokey name, such as "Professor Dummkopf" in Mitchell's "The Man Without a Body". Since Mitchell's fictions were originally published in newspapers, typeset in the same format as news articles and not identified as fiction, he may possibly have used this device to signal to his readers that this text should not be taken seriously.
Mitchell's life and work
Mitchell was born in Bath, Maine, the home of his maternal grandparents. Mitchell's family were wealthy at the time of his birth. When he was eight years old, his parents moved with him to New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, to a house on Fifth Avenue directly across from the future site of the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
's main branch.
In 1863 he witnessed the Draft Riots, later describing them in his memoirs. In the aftermath of the bloody riots, Mitchell's father moved the family to Tar River, North Carolina. While living there, as a boy of fourteen, young Mitchell's letters to The Bath Times (his birthplace's local paper) were his first published writing.
The one great personal tragedy of Mitchell's life was a bizarre accident in 1872, when he was twenty years old. On a train journey from Bowdoin College
Bowdoin College
Bowdoin College , founded in 1794, is an elite private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick, Maine. As of 2011, U.S. News and World Report ranks Bowdoin 6th among liberal arts colleges in the United States. At times, it was ranked as high as 4th in the country. It is...
to Bath, Maine, a hot cinder from the engine's smokestack flew in through the window and struck Mitchell's left eye, blinding it. After several weeks, while doctors attempted to restore this eye's sight, Mitchell's uninjured right eye suddenly underwent sympathetic blindness, rendering him completely sightless. His burnt left eye eventually healed and regained its sight, but his uninjured right eye remained blind. The sightless eye was later removed surgically, and replaced with a prosthetic glass eye. While recovering from this surgery, Mitchell wrote his story "The Tachypomp".
Mitchell first became a professional journalist at the Daily Advertiser in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Massachusetts, where his mentor was Edward Everett Hale
Edward Everett Hale
Edward Everett Hale was an American author, historian and Unitarian clergyman. He was a child prodigy who exhibited extraordinary literary skills and at age thirteen was enrolled at Harvard University where he graduated second in his class...
, now also recognized as an early author of science fiction.
Mitchell had a life-long interest in the supernatural and paranormal, and several of his early newspaper pieces are factual investigations of alleged hauntings, usually determined (by Mitchell) to have a normal explanation. Mitchell later interviewed and befriended Madame Blavatsky
Madame Blavatsky
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , was a theosophist, writer and traveler. Between 1848 and 1875 Blavatsky had gone around the world three times. In 1875, Blavatsky together with Colonel H. S. Olcott established the Theosophical Society...
, the well-known alleged psychic, yet (despite their friendship) he considered her a fraud.
Mitchell's entree to the New York Sun, where he eventually found long-term employment, was his ghost story "Back from that Bourne". Fiction published as fact, this purported to be the true account of a recently deceased resident of Maine returning as a ghost. One of Mitchell's later stories, "An Uncommon Sort of Spectre", is one of fiction's earliest examples of a ghost from the future. Many of Mitchell's fictions—published originally as factual newspaper articles—deal with ghosts or other supernatural events, and would now be considered works of fantasy rather than science fiction.
Mitchell often inserted more than one innovative concept into a science-fiction tale. His 1879 story "The Senator's Daughter", set in the future year 1937, contains several technological predictions which were daring for the time: travel by pneumatic tube, electrical heating, newspapers printed in the home by electrical transmission, food-pellet concentrates, international broadcasts, and the suspended animation
Suspended animation
Suspended animation is the slowing of life processes by external means without termination. Breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means. Extreme cold can be used to precipitate the slowing of an individual's functions; use...
of a living human being through freezing (cryogenics
Cryogenics
In physics, cryogenics is the study of the production of very low temperature and the behavior of materials at those temperatures. A person who studies elements under extremely cold temperature is called a cryogenicist. Rather than the relative temperature scales of Celsius and Fahrenheit,...
). This same story contains several social predictions: votes for American women, a war between the United States and China (with China winning), and interracial marriage.
In 1874, Mitchell married Annie Sewall Welch. During the early years of Mitchell's tenure at the Sun, they lived in an apartment on Madison Avenue, where the marriage produced two sons. (The second son was born during a visit to relatives in Bath, Maine.) The need for larger quarters brought the couple to Bloomfield, New Jersey, where they lived while their next two sons were born. By all accounts, Mitchell's family life was happy. One of Mitchell's colleagues at the Sun was that paper's night editor Garrett P. Serviss
Garrett P. Serviss
Garrett Putnam Serviss was an astronomer, popularizer of astronomy, and early science fiction writer. Serviss was born in upstate New York, and majored in science at Cornell. He took a law degree at Columbia, but never worked as an attorney...
, who would also become an important figure in early science fiction. Mitchell was a long time resident of Glen Ridge, New Jersey
Glen Ridge, New Jersey
Glen Ridge is a borough in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 7,527. In 2010, Glen Ridge was ranked as the 38th Best Place to live by New Jersey Monthly magazine....
and is credited with founding the community: he moved to this region when it was comparatively unpopulated, and his local influence led others to build houses there.
On July 20, 1903, Mitchell became editor-in-chief of the New York Sun, at that time the leading newspaper in the United States. In 1912, following his first wife's death, he married Ada M. Burroughs; this marriage produced a fifth son. Mitchell remained a popular and respected figure in American journalism until his death (apparently from a heart attack) while visiting New London, Connecticut. He was buried in his beloved Glen Ridge. During his lifetime, his journalism paid him well, and he clearly had no desire for public recognition, since he had many opportunities to achieve this yet never attempted to do so.
External links
- Mitchell's obituary at Time magazine
- Mitchell contributed to Stories by American Authors, Volume 5, available at Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
- Mitchell contributed to Stories by American Authors, Volume 5, available at Project Gutenberg
- The Tachypomp and Other Stories by Edward Page Mitchell
- Some of Mitchell's work has been collected at the Horror Masters site.