Ripley Hitchcock

Ripley Hitchcock, one of the members whom one would usually count on meeting at the Century in the afternoon groups which were discussing the war news, was both a discriminating writer himself and an untiring worker in the guiding and perfecting of the literary achievement of other men. His own bent being primarily for art criticism, on which he also lectured widely, his facile pen touched widely on history and literature also. In all these fields he was thoroughly familiar.

During many years he conducted with rare judgment the selection and publication of the manuscripts of every sort which came to two of the great New York publishing houses. The general public happened to learn of his rescuing David Harum from its original hopeless effort at depicting metropolitan society, and turning it into the vigorous provincial character-sketch which was at first only a minor incident of the story. But the public did not know of his work by way of similar invaluable suggestion in scores of other literary productions, in whose success his own important part was never advertised.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1919 Century Association Yearbook