The Waterbury Democrat., 1936-12-07
TRINITY TEACHER WINS CASH PRIZE
Hartford Educator Given $5,OOO for ''The Life of
 Bronson AIcOtt"

Boston, December T-Little, Brown and Company,s Centenary prize of e5OO0 has been awarded to Odell Shepard, Goodwin professor of Eng fish at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, for his manuscript rPedlar,s Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott," which will be pub lished in the spring of 1887 when Little, Brown and Company cele- bfate the completion of one hun dred years of book publishing under the names of their founders.
 Chosen as the most interesting unpublished American work (not 1iction), resting squarely on the f0nndation of fact, from 587 manu- scripts submitted in the Contest, Professor Shepard's biography rep xesents the authors many years of intense interest in Concord and the group of famous 18th century writers and thinkers who lived there. Professor Shepard edited 'The Heart of Thoreau's Journals" and ''Thoreau,s Week on the Con- cord and Merrimac Rivers" He is a close student of Emerson and of Transcendentalism, and is deeply irnbued with the background of his subject, whose house in Concord is still a shrine for pilgrims to that center of 18th century American culture.
 Professor Shepard traces his in- terest in Alcott to his own boy hood in Chicago where at the age of nine he read Thoreau's essay on 'sWild Apples" He immediately read Thoreau's entire works, and feels that his whole life has been strongly affected by this early in- troduction to the philosopher of Walden. It was this interest which originally drew him from the mid- die west to New England where he has lived since 1918.
 The authors attention was first drawn to Alcott by the adminira- ton which Emerson and Thoreau expressed for him. Professor Shep- are suspected that there must be . better reason for remembering a man whom Emerson called "the greatest genius of his time" than the fact that he was the father of Louisa Alcott.
 Fifty volumes of Alcott's journals, more than five million words in ell, were read by the author in preparation for the writing of his book. Professor Shepard is the first person outside the Alcott fam to have had access to all the jour- nals and is probably the only liv- ing person who has read them through.
 Born in Sterling, Illinois, Profess sor Shepard studied at Northwest ern School of Music and at North western university, from which he graduated in 1904. He holds the deGrees of Ph. B. (190D and Ph. M. (19c8) from the University of Chi cago, as well as Ph. D. from Har- yard university (19l6) and an hon. orary Lit. D. from Northwestern (1932). In 1908 he was married to Mary Farwell Record of Evanston, Illinois. They have one son, Willard Odell. Professor Shepard, follow ing his graduation from college, was a newspaper man for time, then taught English at the University of Southern California and at Harvard and has been Goodwin professor of English at Trinity college since 1917. He Is an enthusiastic fisherman and is the author of Thy Rod and Thy Creel." His other published books include "Bliss Carman, Study of His Poetry" and 'The Harvest of a Quiet Eye" essays about walking in Connecticut, and he is the compiler of several collections of essays and poems.
 Little, Brown & Co. regard Ped lars Progress" as a distinguished work which will take its place as one of the outstanding publications of their first century of publishing in New England. It is an interesting coincidence that Little, Brown & Co. are the publishers of the books of Louisa M. Alcott, whose fame, in the opinion of Professor Shepard, has obscured her fathers reputa- ton.