Philip S. Marden

Philip Marden, who died in his ninetieth year, helped maintain, in 1963, The Century’s tradition of longevity. An author, a journalist, and an inveterate traveler, his interests were, for the most part, regionally directed. His journalistic work was on a newspaper of his native city, Lowell, Massachusetts. Beginning as a practicing lawyer and a member of the Massachusetts Bar, he switched after three years as special attorney for a local syndicate to the office of managing editor of the Lowell Courier-Citizen. He soon became editor-in-chief and contributed much to the paper’s editorial page including a supplementary weekly article. When, in 1941, the Courier-Citizen was bought by the Lowell Sun, his writing became familiar to the Sun’s readers under the heading “Saturday Chat.”

He was the author of several books, most of them written as a result of his varied extensive travels. These appeared between 1907 and 1942 and included Greece and the Aegean Islands, Travels in Spain, Egyptian Days, Sailing South, A Wayfarer in Portugal, and such adaptations of his newspaper articles as Detours, Passable but Unsafe and In Times Like These.

Born in Lowell in 1874, Philip Marden was educated in the local high school and at Dartmouth College, from which he graduated with the class of 1894. Before entering the Harvard Law School, he spent a year doing newspaper work and thus formed the attachment for journalism that eventually drew him away from the law. He remained devoted to his alma mater and served for ten years as an alumni trustee of Dartmouth. The college also gave him the honorary degree of Master of Arts. His cultural activities were in the Lowell Art Association, of which he was president, and the Lowell Literary Club.

Roger Burlingame
1964 Century Association Yearbook