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"New Humanism" was a term applied to a theory ofliterary criticism, together with its consequences for culture and political thought, developed around 1900 by the AmericanscholarIrving Babbitt and the American literary critic and essayistPaul Elmer More. Babbitt's bookLiterature and the American College (1908) first gave it a definite form; it was aimed at a perceived gap between the ideals ofliberal arts colleges, and university education as it actually existed.
Babbitt himself did not accept the qualificationnew as applied to hishumanism, which became influential as a strand ofconservative thought in the following years, up to the 1930s. Other authors associated with the New Humanist group includedGeorge Roy Elliott (1883–1963),Norman Foerster (1887–1972) andStuart Pratt Sherman (1881–1926). Numerous attacks came from outside, especially during the 1920s.
This group was also at times known asThe Nation criticism, from More's time editingThe Nation from 1909. The adoption bySeward Collins of its philosophy, or some trappings, in his publicationThe Bookman did something to tarnish it, in a way that external critics had up until then failed to do. Some of the members renounced the approach.
From, Exile's Return byMalcolm Cowley;
"Years later, during the controversy over the NewHumanism, I read several books by Professor Irving Babbitt, thefounder of the school, and found myself carried back into theatmosphere of the classroom. Babbitt and his disciples likedto talk about poise, proportionateness, the imitation of greatmodels, decorum and the Inner Check. Those too were leisureclass ideals and I decided that they were simply the studentvirtues rephrased in loftier language. The truth was that theNew Humanism grew out of Eastern university life, where itflourished as in a penthouse garden."
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