His grandfather, Frederick William Matthiessen, was an industrial leader in zinc production and a successful manufacturer of clocks and machine tools; and also served as mayor of LaSalle, Illinois for 10 years.

[3] As the recipient of the university's DeForest Prize, he entitled his oration, "Servants of the Devil," in which he denounced Yale's administration as an "autocracy, ruled by a Corporation out of touch with college life and allied with big business.

Matthiessen was an American studies scholar and literary critic at Harvard University[6] and chaired its undergraduate program in history and literature.

Its focus was the period roughly from 1850 to 1855, in which all these writers, except Emerson, published what would, by Matthiessen's time, be considered their masterpieces: Melville's Moby-Dick, multiple editions of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, and Thoreau's Walden.

[8] He wrote the chapter on Poe for the Literary History of the United States (LHUS, 1948), but "some of the editors missed the usual Matthiessen touch of brilliance and subtlety.

"[9] Kermit Vanderbilt suggests that because Matthiessen was "not able to pull together the related strands" between Poe and the writers of American Renaissance, the chapter is "markedly old-fashioned.

The Harvard Crimson reported his inaugural address, in which Matthiessen quoted the campus union's constitution: "In affiliating with the organized labor movement, we express our desire to contribute to and receive support from this powerful progressive force; to reduce the segregation of teachers from the rest of the workers ...and increase thereby the sense of common purpose among them; and in particular to cooperate in this field in the advancement of education and resistance to all reaction.

[14] Reflective of the emerging McCarthyism surveillance of left-wing university academics, he was mentioned as an activist in Boston area so-called "Communist front groups" by Herbert Philbrick.

"[16] As a gay man in the 1930s and 1940s, he chose to remain in the closet throughout his professional career, if not in his personal life, although traces of homoerotic concern are apparent in his writings.

"[1][20][21] Throughout his teaching career at Harvard, Matthiessen maintained a residence in either Cambridge or Boston, but the couple often retreated to their shared cottage in Kittery, Maine.

[23] Matthiessen spent the evening before his own death at the home of his friend and colleague, Kenneth Murdock, Harvard's Higginson Professor of English Literature.

He was being targeted by anti-communist forces that would soon be exploited by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and inquiries by the House Un-American Activities Committee into his politics may have been a contributing factor in his suicide.

In an article subsection titled "Dupes and Fellow Travelers Dress Up Communist Fronts" in the April 4, 1949 edition of Life magazine, he had been pictured among fifty prominent academics, scientists, clergy and writers, who also included Albert Einstein, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, Langston Hughes, Norman Mailer and fellow Harvard professors Kirtley Mather, Corliss Lamont, and Ralph Barton Perry.

[27] In 1958, Eric Jacobsen wrote that Matthiessen's death had been "hastened by forces whose activities earned for themselves the sobriquet un-American., which they sought so assiduously to fasten on others.

Their sense of loss and struggle to understand his suicide can be found in two novels with central figures inspired by Matthiessen, May Sarton's Faithful are the Wounds (1955)[29] and Mark Merlis's American Studies (1994).

[6][7][33][34][35] Holders of the chair have included: Several generations after Matthiessen's death, this visiting professorship reaffirms the university's appreciation for his continuing legacy as a storied scholar and teacher.