Tyler, Moses Coit, 1835–1900, American writer on intellectual history, b. Griswold, Conn. He moved to Michigan as a boy. Graduated from Yale (1857) and from Andover Theological Seminary, he entered the Congregational ministry, but remained in it only two years. He was professor of English (1867–81) at the Univ. of Michigan and of American history (1881–1900) at Cornell and was an organizer of the American Historical Association. The two books upon which his fame chiefly rests are A History of American Literature, 1607–1765 (1878) and The Literary History of the American Revolution (1897). His life of Patrick Henry for the “American Statesmen” series and his Three Men of Letters (1895) also added to his reputation as a sympathetic and accurate biographer. His wide knowledge of both history and literature enabled him to write authoritatively on both.
See biography by H. M. Jones (1933).
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