Holley

says. His poems, both shorter pieces and longer
narratives like Bitter Sweet and Katrina, are
usually in facile if undistinguished verse, and
continued the didactic tradition common in New
England. The timely and popular Life of Abra-
ham Lincoln (1866) enforced the lessons to be
drawn from the President's career, as well as
recorded biographical facts. Holland not only
conformed to the taste of his generation but he
met its moral and spiritual needs, and it is a
tribute to his usefulness that half a million vol-
umes of such unsensational works as his were
sold. Like many prophets of an age he was not
for all time, and he ceased to be read soon after
his death. In the history of American j ournalism
he will be remembered for his share in building
up one of the greatest provincial newspapers and
one of the most important nineteenth-century
literary magazines.

[Probably the best single source of information re-
garding Holland's life is the article by his friend Ed-
ward Eggleston in the Century Magazine, Dec. 1881.
His own account #f his connection with Scribner's
Monthly appeared in the issue of that periodical for
June 1881. See also G. S. Merriam, The Life and
Times of Samuel Bowles (1885); R, U. Johnson, Re-
membered Yesterdays (1923) ; H. M, Plunkett, Josiah
Gilbert Holland (1894), an uncritical volume; Af Me-
morial of Josiah Gilbert Holland (privately printed,
n.d.), containing sermons by Washington Gladden and
L. D. Bevan, and eulogies by many friends; N. Y, Trib-
une and Springfield Republican, Oct. 13, 1881. For a
bibliography of Holland's poetical writings see Cam-
bridge Hist, of Am. Lit., IV (1921), 64$;ior his fic-
tion, Ibid., IV, 662. A contemporary criticism of sev-
eral of his works is found in the North Am. Rev., July
l86*-] W.B.C

HOLLEY, ALEXANDER LYMAN (July
20, i832-Jan. 29, 1882), writer, mechanical en-
gineer, metallurgist, was born at Lakeville, Conn.,
the son of Alexander H. and Jane M. (Lyman)
Holley. His father was a manufacturer of cutlery
with a large establishment in Lakeville, and was
governor of Connecticut in 1857. Holley was
educated in academies in Salisbury and Farm-
ington, Conn., and Stockbridge, Mass., then pre-
pared for college under a private tutor and en-
tered Brown University in the autumn of 1850.
At a very early age he gave evidence of a keenly
observant mind and an inborn talent for draw-
ing. As early as his tenth year he was familiar
with the machinery in his father's knife manu-
factory and sketched it in great detail Besides
his skill in drawing, he developed a literary talent
while still in preparatory school and published a
number of school papers. He wrote and sold,
before he entered college, "An Essay on Pen and
Pocket Cutlery/' which was published in Henry
V. Poor's American Railroad Journal (May 24
to Aug. 24, 1850). During his college career,
which was brilliant, he continued his work of
drawing, particularly locomotives. He invented,

Holley

too, a steam-engine cut-off which was described
by him in Appletons* Mechanics' Magazine and
Engineers' Journal, July 1852.

Upon graduating in 1853, Holley entered the
shops of Corliss & Nightingale, Providence, R.
I., as a draftsman and machinist, and worked es-
pecially on an experimental locomotive equipped
with die Corliss valve gearing. In 1855 ^e
joined the New Jersey Locomotive Works at
Jersey City, N. J. Here he met Zerah Colburn,
the superintendent, who was also the publisher
of the Railroad Advocate, for which magazine
Holley had written articles while with the Cor-
liss company. Shortly after this meeting, Col-
burn sold the Advocate to Holley, who there-
upon gave up his locomotive work and published
Holley's Railroad Advocate until the financial
crash of 1857. Holley and Colburn then induced
a number of railroad presidents to send them
abroad to study European railroad practice.
Their report appeared in 1858 under the title,
The Permanent Way and Coal-burning Loco-
motive Boilers of European Railways, with a
Comparison of the Working Economy of Euro-
pean and American Lines and the Principles
upon Which Improvement Must Proceed. It re-
flected much credit upon the authors and was
profusely illustrated with Holley's own drawings,
but to sell it Holley had to resort literally to
house to house canvassing. About this time he
met Henry J. Raymond [q.v.], founder and editor
of the New York Times, who immediately at-
tached Holley to his staff, and between 1858 and
1875 ^e latter wrote nearly three hundred ar-
ticles for this newspaper. He was also, during
this period, technical editor of the American
Railway Review, and, in addition, he wrote and
published in 1860 American and European Rail'
way Practice.

Although he had thoroughly established him-
self as a technical writer, Holley was ambitious
to engage in more original engineering work.
Accordingly, about 1861 he undertook the rede-
sign of a locomotive for the Camden & Amboy
Railroad and then joined Edwin A. Stevens
[g.^.], founder of Stevens Institute, Hoboken,
N. J., in the latter's work on a floating gun bat-
tery. Holley made several trips to Europe seek-
ing information in ordnance and armor for Ste-
vens and while in England in 1862 he first learned
of and investigated Henry Bessemer's newly in-
vented process for making steel. On his return
to the United States he interested Corning, Wins-
low & Company in the Bessemer process, and
in May 1863 returned to England and bought for
them the American rights to the patent. He was
then engaged to design and build a Bessemer

148