Fred Lewis Pattee was born on March 22, 1863, in
Bristol, New Hampshire, to farmer Lewis Franklin Pattee and Mary Philbrick Pattee ( Ingalls). After attending public schools in Bristol and South
Alexandria, New Hampshire, in 1881 he entered
New Hampton School and completed the college preparatory course in 1884. Pattee enrolled at
Dartmouth College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1888 and a Master of Arts degree in 1891. Despite an interest in becoming a journalist, Pattee entered the teaching profession, first at a
New Jersey grammar school. He worked as a school administrator and journalist until becoming an interim faculty member at the
Pennsylvania State College's English Department as a substitute for the department's head and sole professor in 1894. He earned a full professorship the following year. As an American literary historian, Pattee's earliest predecessor was
John Neal, whose essays in ''
Blackwood's Magazine he collected and published in 1937 in their first bound edition, American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine (1824–1825)''. He acknowledged Neal's work as "the first attempt anywhere at a history of American literature". In his later career, Pattee served as a visiting professor at his
alma mater, Dartmouth College (1905), as well as the
University of Illinois,
Bread Loaf Summer School and
Columbia University. Following his retirement from his post as Penn State's professor of American literature, Pattee joined the faculty of
Rollins College in
Florida. He would remain there until his death at age 87 in
Winter Park, Florida, on May 6, 1950. Pattee was married twice, to Anna Lura Plumer and Grace Gorrell Garee, and had one daughter—Sarah Lewis Pattee—from his first marriage. ==Legacy==