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The Boston Authors Club (BAC) is an independent, non-profit organization founded in the late 19th century to gather authors and people who love books and to celebrate literature. Today, the BAC runs a competition and awards the Julia Ward Howe prize in a number of categories for books published each year by Boston-area authors, in addition to sponsoring events including book readings, discussions of how to advance a writing career and examinations of the roles of literature in contemporary life.

History
In 1886, a group of Boston-based literary-minded men, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Dean Howells, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich joined with Reverend Arthur Wentworth Eaton in attempting to form an authors club. Their inspiration came from the New York Authors Club. Founded in 1882 by authors including Robert Louis Stevenson and Stephen Crane, this club was established as a vehicle for writers to gather together, discuss and evaluate the work of their peers.

In Boston, Reverend Eaton wrote to Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the well-known abolitionist, author and literary critic, “the proposed authors’ club is not a personal enterprise, but an intentional movement concerning which…men interested in literature [would be] willing to take the steps to secure an experience of opinion.”

Despite some initial interest, the putative club had difficulty getting organized. So the following year, in 1887, Higginson sent out what he called an “Authors’ Club Circular” – a survey, actually – to a number of influential men of letters, academia and social status. The “Circular” posed three questions:  was there a need for such an authors’ club in Boston? Did they need a building? Should they admit women? Higginson saved the responses to this “Circular” in an album that he ultimately donated to the Boston Public Library where it is housed today in its Special Collections.

What’s most interesting about the responses to his queries are the wildly divergent answers to the third question. For example, Edward Lowell wrote, “Emphatically no women, not that women are not as distinguished authors as men, but I think the club should be social, not oratorical, and that sociability among men requires tobacco, every day clothes, attitudes sometimes more comfortable than formal, and a general absence of ceremony.”

Higginson summarized the arguments against having women as including “greater freedom of intercourse; a more Bohemian flavor and greater economy of expenses.”

On the other side was an argument put forth by George Pellent, who wrote, “The Club should surely be open to women, for they have much to teach us…the presence of ladies would do much to prevent a natural tendency toward disruptiveness, petty quarreling and lack of refinement.”  Higginson’s own thoughts about why women should be allowed included “the seeming arrogance of assuming that all books are written by men.” Perhaps because of these significant divides, no authors club got launched.

Fast forward to 1899. At a tea given in Amherst by Mabel Loomis Todd (the first editor of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, along with Higginson), a group of women including May Alden Ward and Helen Winslow, one of Boston’s first newspaperwomen, discussed reviving the idea of a Boston Authors Club. They broached the topic with noted writer and social activist Julia Ward Howe. The “Battle Hymn of the Republic” author reportedly said, “Go ahead. Call some people together here at my house. We will form a club and it will be a good one too.”

In an article published in a publication called Clark’s Book Herald, Helen Winslow wrote, “There had been an attempt some time in the eighties to establish such a club; but no women were to be admitted and it was avowedly for the purpose of protecting the interests and furthering special causes pertaining to authors and their works – and although there had been some little talk and newspaper discussion over the project, the idea was allowed to die without any definite organization…After carefully thinking of the feasibility of such a plan, [I] broached the subject to Mrs. May Alden Ward and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe…on a visit to Mrs. Mabel Loomis Todd at Amherst’s Observatory House. Mrs. Ward, with her usual sagacity, saw what a field existed for a delightful club and urged me to go on with the project as I laid it out. Accordingly, soon after my return to Boston I called on several of Boston’s leading literary men and women to talk the matter over with them.”

And so they did. The newly launched BAC included both women and men, somewhat of a novelty among organizations at the turn of the century. Julia Ward Howe was elected the first president. Over the years the BAC has counted among its membership many well-known writers, including Louise Chandler Moulton, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Isaac Asimov, Anne Sexton, and Ellery Queen. Its members have also included people well known in other realms like the “father of public relations” Edward Bernays and sculptor Daniel Chester French. And some BAC members have been known by more eclectic appellations. In a published collection of essays about early members of the BAC, additional members listed included “Russell Gordon Carter, Gentleman and Scholar,” “William F. Boos, Noted Toxicologist,” and “Gamaliel Bradford, A profound student of human souls.”

Although the BAC’s early constitution suggests that its intent was to “… further literary purposes and to promote social intercourse among the authors of Boston and vicinity,” a glance at the programs from early BAC days make clear that the social component often took precedence. A 1903 program stated, “A Fifteen minute paper on the subject “The Absence and the Importance of a Worthy Literary Criticism in this Country,” will be read by Mr. George Willis Cooke, and will be followed by a very brief discussion. The rest of the afternoon will be devoted to social intercourse. Husbands and wives of members are, as usual, invited.”

In the early days of the BAC, membership included both those who were published authors and those who were passionate about books. There were also “resident” and “non-resident” categories of membership, the latter extending out in a 100 mile radius – perhaps to include people like Mabel Loomis Todd in Amherst, who had been instrumental in the early organization of the group.

In 1900, an article in The New York Times predicted the demise of the Boston Authors Club, perhaps because of the decision to include both men and women among its ranks. But today, the BAC continues to exist, more than a century since its founding.

Julia Ward Howe Prizes
The Boston Authors Club has been awarding the Julia Ward Howe Prizes, (named after the Club's first President) to outstanding adult and young reader books for over twenty years. These awards recognize exceptional books by Boston area authors in four separate categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and the Young Reader category.

Criteria for the Julia Ward Howe award include:


 * The books must be published the year prior to the award being given.
 * Authors must live or work within 100 miles of Boston the year their books are published.

Books published in print are eligible unless otherwise noted in the criteria. Edited books, textbooks, and reference books are not qualified. Self-published and digital-only books are not eligible.

Daniel Chester French (1850-1931)
Daniel Chester French came into prominence in 1875 with his Minuteman statue at “the rude bridge that arched the flood” in Concord. French’s notable Boston sculptures include the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard in 1884, the John Boyle O’Reiily memorial in 1897, honoring the literary leader of Boston’s Irish newcomers, a statue of the abolitionist and labor reformer, Wendell Phillips, and a series of bronze doors for the Boston Public Library from1884-1904. French gained his greatest fame with his statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., completed in 1920.

David McCulloch (1933 -)
David McCullough is an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer. His first book was The Johnstown Flood (1968). He has since written books on such topics as Harry S. Truman, John Adams, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Wright Brothers. He has been widely acclaimed as a “master of the art of narrative history,” and “a matchless writer.”  Mr. McCullough’s other books include The Great Bridge, The Path between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, Brave Companions, and Truman. Among other numerous awards, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Gordon Wood (1933 - )
Gordon Steward Wood is Alva O. Way University Professor at Brown University. He received the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1993 for The Radicalism of the American Revolution. His book The Creation of the American Republic won the Bancroft Prize. In 2010, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal.

James Carroll (1943-)
James Carroll is the author of eleven novels and eight works of non-fiction. His autobiography, An American Requiem, won the National Book Award. His other works include Constantine’s Sward, a New York Times bestseller, and an acclaimed documentary; House of War, which won the first Pen-Galbraith Award; and Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which was named a 2011 Best Book by Publishers Weekly. He lectures widely, both in the United States and abroad, and is a columnist for the Boston Globe.

John P. Marquand (1893-1960)
John P. Marquand drew from his own experience in his best-selling novels to depict the precarious role of the outsider looking in. As a boy, his New York family in financial ruins, he was sent to live with eccentric aunts in the declining city of Newburyport. Marquand’s subsequent life as member of the privileged Harvard class of 1915 further confirmed his poor boy outsider status and fired a contrary zeal to interpret the privileged realm that was held at arm’s length from him. Marquand ‘s fame rests heavily on his novel, The Late George Apley (1938), which won him a Pulitzer Prize and acclaim as guide to the inner life of the proper Bostonian.

Katherine Lee Bates (1859-1929)
Katharine Lee Bates was an American songwriter and educator, remembered as the author of the words to the anthem "America the Beautiful,” one of the most universally known, beloved tunes in the United States. As a popular educator at Wellesley, Bates was vocal about women’s rights, and she was instrumental in feminist initiatives of the era. Bates lived in Wellesley with Katharine Coman, who was a history and political economy teacher. The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman's death in 1915.

Marc Anthony DeWolfe Howe (1864-1960)
Marc Antony DeWolfe Howe was a central figure in chronicling the literary and civic life of Boston. A Harvard graduate of 1888, he edited the Harvard Alumni Bulletin from then until 1913 and extended that focus by editing an account of Harvard Volunteers in Europe (1916) and Memoirs of the Harvard Dead in the War Against Germany (1920). Howe served as editor and then vice president of the chief literary journal in Boston, The Atlantic Monthly, until 1929. His most acclaimed work was a biography of literary historian Barrett Wendell, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1925.

Willa Cather (1873-1947)
Willa Cather was born in Virginia and spent much of her youth in Nebraska. In 1892, she published her first short story, “Peter," in Boston magazine. Her 1910 short story, “A Wagner Matinee” takes place in Boston, focusing on a trip to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She is known mostly for her novels O Pioneers (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915) and My Antonia (1918), all of which concern frontier life on the Great Plains. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her World War One novel, One of Ours (1922),

The following table lists some additional notable members of the Boston Authors Club along with a contribution to their notability.