Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Biography

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was an American poet, author, physician, medical reformer, professor and lecturer. He is noted for his oratory and literary skills. The ‘Breakfast-Table’ series remained his most distinguished prose work that gained him international fame. He was a member of ‘Fireside Poets’ along with the likes of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier among others. The writings of the American ‘Fireside Poets’ were considered conventional and family friendly and were among the first few to gain immense popularity in Europe. He was respected and acclaimed by his peers for his works and also earned international appreciation all his life. Based in Boston, he advocated the city’s culture and his writings often reflected a Boston-centric view. That is why many a times he is referred as ‘Boston Brahmin’. This term was originally coined by him to refer oldest and intellectual families of Boston. He considered Boston was ‘’ the thinking centre of the continent, and therefore of the planet”. He practiced as a physician and served as a professor of physiology and anatomy at the ‘Harvard University’. He was one of the founder-editors of the journal ‘Atlantic Monthly’. Apart from poetry he penned down novels, table-talk books, travelogues, biographies and medical treatises as well. He wrote on a wide range of subjects including theology, medicine, psychology, democracy and society.