William Vaughn Moody

William Vaughn Moody, was an American College professor, poet, author and playwright. Orphaned at an early age, Moody had to work his way through prep school and later Harvard. By 1895 he had earned a master's degree in English from Harvard. He went on to be an instructor at Harvard and Radcliffe and later the University of Chicago, where he held the chair of Professor of English Literature. In 1903 Moody decided to leave the academic field to focus full time on writing. Moody is probably best remembered as the author of "A History of English Literature", "The Great Divide", "The Faith Healer" and the lyrical drama "The Masque of Judgment". On 5 July, 1909 Moody married Chicago high school English teacher Harriet Converse Tilden at Wesleyan Methodist Church in Québec, Canada. While most likely on their honeymoon, Moody became seriously ill on board a passenger ship in the South Atlantic. At first the illness mystified his doctors, but eventually they would discover he had an inoperative brain tumor. Moody passed away at Colorado Springs, Colorado on 17 October, 1910, barely a year after he first fell ill. The 1948 book "A House in Chicago" by Olivia H. Dunbar, tells the story of Harriet Moody's romance and marriage with William Vaughn Moody and how in the years following his death their home became a mecca for many artists and intellectuals of that era.