The celebration of Oliver Wendell Holmes's seventieth birthday

The celebration of Oliver Wendell Holmes's seventieth birthday

Magazine illustrations

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

Daily Graphic

The famous "Atlantic Breakfast," given by the publishers of The Atlantic monthly on December 3, to honor Holmes at 70 and his contributions to the success of the magazine, was covered in local newspapers. Guests at the event included literary figures Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Dean Howells, Sarah Orne Jewett, and John Greenleaf Whittier, along with Harvard's president, Charles W. Eliot. Holmes later wrote to Howells, "You showed, I thought, great tact, and savoir dire and faire in your management of the south pole of the festival. Of course I was pleased—how could I help being pleased—with the penetrating and nicely accented praise you awarded me…. I hope you will live to see your septuagenarian breakfast and many a breakfast on the other side of it, not only famous, but happy in all that surrounds you.”

Illustration of the seventieth birthday party of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1804-1894), printed in the Daily graphic on December 6, 1879

Unknown

1879 December 06

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Papers of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1838-1890 (inclusive). GA 38 Portfolio

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1 illustration

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DigID0002122

Gift of Maury Austin Bromsen to the Library of Harvard Medical School, 1963