ABSTRACT
Henry William Herbert was born on August 7, 1807, in London, England, one of three children of William Herbert, Dean of Manchester, a classicist and parliamentary orator of some pretension, and Letitia E. Dorethea, the daughter of a viscount. Henry's education at Caius College, Cambridge, completed in the winter of 1829-1830, was probably intended to fit him for the Church, but characteristic personal and financial indiscretions are supposed to have barred him from that career and from the law. Brief travels and sporting adventures in New York and Canada led him to abandon plans to settle in the British provinces. Herbert made his American literary debut through occasional pieces and commentary on New York art and theater as editor of the American Monthly Magazine, a journal that he began as a competitor to the Knickerbocker, from 1833 through 1835 with Charles Fenno Hoffman as his assistant.
