Archives West Finding Aid

Joseph Barlow Harrison was born in Coupeville on Whidbey Island, Washington, in 1886. His pioneer parents, Isaac and Agnes Harrison, both physicians, had come to Washington in the 1880s from Michigan, where they had met at the university medical school. His father's family was originally from Missouri; a partial reminiscence of that family is included in the collection. Professor Harrison was a faculty member of the University of Washington Dept. of English from 1913 until his death of a heart attack, which occured in 1956, one week before his retirement.

Harrison came to Seattle in 1897 and attended grammar school in the old University Building in downtown (the present site of the Fairmont Olympic Hotel). He graduated from Seattle High School on Madison Street and then attended the University of Washington, receiving his bachelor of arts degree in 1910. At this time he applied for and was granted a Rhodes scholarship for three years (1910-1913) to Oxford, England, becoming only the fifth Rhodes scholar from Washington State. His activities in the first year and part of the second (1910-1911) are documented in the diary contained in this collection. Harrison received a degree from Oxford in the honor school of English Language and Literature. He became a faculty member at the University of Washington upon his return from Oxford in 1913. Harrison taught courses in American literature, playwriting, short story writing, and Shakespeare, among others, and was a popular professor of literature in the UW extension service (night school).

In addition to his classroom work, Professor Harrison composed poetry and was well known as a liberal essayist and editor. When Glenn Hughes began his series of chapbooks in 1926, Harrison's A Short View of Menckenism in Menckenese was the first to be published. Harrison edited a collection of writings of Bret Harte in 1941, and his essay, "The Necessity of Liberalism," received wide attention after its publication in the Pacific Spectator magazine in 1955. He also wrote a popular column on word useage and language called "Explaining" in the University of Washington Daily newspaper.

Harrison was founder and later president of the university faculty senate. He served on the board of directors of the Repertory Theater and was a member of the American Association of University Professors, the Modern Language Association, and the Phi Gamma Delta social fraternity. He served as an officer during World War I. Harrison and his wife, the former Ellen Shelton, had two daughters.