Alger, William Rounseville

ALGER, al´jer, WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE: Unitarian; b. at Freetown, Mass., Dec. 30, 1822; d. in Boston Feb. 7, 1905. He was a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, 1847, and held various pastorates (Roxbury, Mass., 1848-55; Boston, as successor of Theodore Parker, 1855-73), but after 1882 lived in Boston without charge. His best-known books are The Poetry of the Orient (Boston, 1856, 5th ed., 1883); The Genius of Solitude (1865, 10th ed., 1884); Friendships of Women (1867, 10th ed., 1884), and particularly A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life (Philadelphia, 1863, 12th ed., Boston, 1885), to which Ezra Abbot furnished his famous bibliography of books on eschatology (see Abbot, Ezra).