He was a lifelong friend and associate of Henry James and a member of the faculty at Harvard University.

[2] He was a childhood friend of Henry James, with whom he attended Reverend W.C. Leverett's school in Newport, Rhode Island,[3] before the Civil War.

[1] He was a prolific essayist, writing on a wide variety of authors, including Alfred de Musset, Arthur Hugh Clough, Berthold Auerbach, Fritz Reuter, George Sand, Ivan Turgenev, Mark Twain, Edward Fitzgerald, Sir Walter Scott, Victor Cherbuliez, Victor Hugo, William Blake, and William Dean Howells, for a variety of American literary publications, including North American Review and The Century.

[5] Edwin Arlington Robinson dedicated his book of poetry, The Three Taverns, to Lilla and Thomas Perry.

[6] On April 9, 1874, he married Lilla Cabot, an American painter who was an important figure in Impressionism in the United States.