Writer, landscape architect, conservationist. Born in Hertford, Connecticut. Desultory schooling; for a year attended lectures at Yale. In early life, interested in engineering and agriculture; for some time occupied in farming as a career. Published Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, 1852. In 1853-1854, contributed to N.Y. Times two series of letters depicting social and economic conditions of the South; the letters later brought out in book form. As landscape architect, designed numerous public grounds, including Central Park in New York City and the capitol grounds in Washington, D.C. Published articles and books on landscape architecture. As conservationist, was instrumental in making public reservations of Yosemite and Niagara Falls. Hon. M.A. Harvard, also Amherst. Hon. LLD. Harvard, also Yale.

Of Dickens's works, A Christmas Carol was one that Olmsted particularly admired. "I never read anything I liked better", he wrote as a young man. "It affected me wonder fully" (Mitchell, Frederick Law Olmsted, p. 30n). Olmsted was a reader of H.W.: in A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856), he quoted a passage from the H.W. article "Rice"; in A Journey through Texas (1857), the first paragraph of "The Noble Savage".

Olmsted made a trip to the Continent and England in 1856. Bayard Taylor (Life and Letters, I, 321.) mentioned him as a guest at a dinner given by Thackeray on August 1 of that year. Olmsted must, therefore, have been in London during the latter part of July—the date by which an article would have had to be submitted to H.W. to appear (as did his) by the second week in August. The Office Book records payment for Olmsted's article as to be made "to Mr. Joyce". "Mr. Joyce" was probably the Joyce in the employ of the publishers Bradbury & Evans (Dickens's letters contain several references to him). Olmsted was in contact with publishing houses, the purpose of his trip being mainly to conduct business for the New York publishing firm Dix & Edwards, of which he was at the time a partner (Mitchell, pp. 51-52). Dix & Edwards reissued or reprinted some part of H.W.

Two H.W. articles were based on Olmsted's writings. "Slaves and Their Masters" was based in large part on A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States; it referred to Olmsted as "a careful and temperate pathologist of the disease" of slavery, a "thoughtful and thorough abolitionist". "Germans in Texas" was based on A Journey through Texas, termed in the article "a very profitable book".

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.

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