Philip Henry Savage

Born in North Brookfield, Massachusetts on February 11, 1868, he was the son of Minot Judson Savage, a well-known Unitarian minister, and Ella A.

The family moved several times during his early life: to Framingham, then to Chicago and finally to Boston in 1874.

Refusing a position as an English instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he began work at the Boston Public Library as Secretary to the Librarian (who was, at the time, Herbert Putnam), becoming a Clerk of the Corporation in 1899.

On May 31, 1899, he was stricken with appendicitis, and after a weeklong illness, he died on June 4 at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Savage is often linked with a group known as the Harvard poets (or the Harvard Pessimists), many of whom died young (such as Trumbull Stickney, George Cabot Lodge, Thomas Parker Sanborn, and Hugh McCulloch).