Howe was born in
Bristol, Rhode Island, the son of Bishop
Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe and Eliza Whitney. In 1886, he graduated from
Lehigh University and in 1887 from
Harvard University (Master of Arts, 1888). He served as associate editor of the ''
Youth's Companion from 1888 to 1893 and from 1899 to 1913. He also served as assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly in 1893-1895, and as editor of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin until 1913. He was vice president of the Atlantic Monthly
company from 1911 to 1929. As an author, he won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for Barrett Wendell and His Letters.
He was the editor of Harvard Volunteers in Europe'' in 1916. He received an honorary Litt. D. from Lehigh in 1916. In 1899, he married Fanny Huntington Quincy (1870–1933), an essayist and author, who was a sister of
Josiah Quincy (1859–1919). The couple had two sons and one daughter: journalist
Quincy Howe (1900-1977), author
Helen Huntington Howe (1905-1975), and Mark DeWolfe Howe (1906-1967), Harvard law professor, civil rights activist, and law clerk and biographer of
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. He lived in Boston, and had a summer home in Cotuit, Massachusetts. He died at the home of his son Mark in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Through his son Quincy, Howe was the grandfather of playwright
Tina Howe. ==Published works==