Robert Underwood Johnson

Editor and poet, born in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. Raised in Centerville, IN, he studied at Earlham College and in 1873 joined the staff of Scribner's Monthly. Named associate editor of the magazine (1881), by then called Century, he edited the famous Century series of Civil War recollections that later became Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 vols, 1887). A leading conservationist, he published John Muir's articles and lobbied for the establishment of Yosemite National Park. Century went into decline after 1900 and he resigned the editorship under pressure (1913). He was later ambassador to Italy (1920–1). A lifelong versifier, he published Poems of Fifty Years and two successor volumes in the 1930s.

Robert Underwood Johnson (January 12, 1853 – October 14, 1937) was a U.S. writer and diplomat.

A native of Washington, D.C., Underwood joined the staff of the Century Magazine in 1873.

Using the influence of Century Magazine, Underwood, in conjunction with famed naturalist John Muir, was one of the driving forces behind the creation of Yosemite National Park in the United States in 1890.

Underwood became noted early for his work on international copyright.

He had a hand in many important publishing undertakings, and it was on his persuasion that Ulysses S.

He was a driving force for the effort to acquire and preserve as a museum the rooms in Rome where the poet John Keats and his friend Joseph Severn spent Keats's final months in 1821.

In 1917 he organized and was chairman of the American Poets' Ambulance in Italy. In 1918-19 he was president of the New York Committee of the Italian War Relief Fund of America. Buel, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1887-88) The Winter Hour and Other Poems (New York: The Century, 1892). Songs of Liberty and Other Poems (New York: The Century, 1897). Poems (New York: The Century, 1902). Saint Gaudens: An Ode (third edition, 1910) Saint Gaudens: An Ode (fourth edition, 1914) Poems of War and Peace (1916) Italian Rhapsody and Other Poems of Italy (1917) Collected Poems, 1881-1919 (New Haven: Yale University, 1920). Your Hall of Fame: Being an Account of the Origin, Establishment, and History of This Division of New York University, from 1900 to 1935 inclusive (New York: New York University, 1935). This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.