American author, born in Enfield, MA, on the 12th of January 1825. He enjoyed only a common-school education, and but one year at Amherst (1843–44). He taught school in Kentucky, studied law and was admitted to the bar, but had to leave in 1849, as his abolitionist ideas shut off all chances of his succeeding in Kentucky. Clerk of the Massachusetts senate (1852–54), he entered the publishing firm of Phillips, Sampson and Company of Boston as their literary adviser, and originated the idea of creating the Atlantic Monthly, with James Russell Lowell as its editor, and was himself its managing assistant. In 1857 the magazine became the property of Ticknor and Fields, and Mr. Underwood accepted the appointment of clerk of the Boston superior criminal court (1859–70). He soon began publishing his Handbooks of English and American Literature, which had a wide circulation. President Cleveland appointed him consul at Glasgow (1885), and consul at Edinburgh (1893). His literary activity never ceased, and he published four novels, Cloud Pictures; Lord of Himself; Man Proposes; and Quabbin (mainly autobiographical). His biographies of Lowell, Longfellow, and Whittier are excellent reading; so are his Builders of the American Literature and Handbook of English History. He died in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 7th of August 1894.
