George William Curtis, an American author, born at Providence, R. I., Feb. 24, 1824. He received his early education in a private school at Jamaica Plain, Mass. At the age of 15 he removed with his father from Providence to New York, where for a year he was a clerk in a mercantile house. In 1842 he went with his elder brother to reside at Brook Farm, in West Roxbury, Mass., where he passed a year and a half in study and agricultural labor; after which he went to Concord, Mass., and with his brother spent 18 months there, living with a farmer, and both taking part regularly in the ordinary work of the farm, and afterward for six months tilling a small piece of land on their own account. In 1846 Mr. Curtis went to Europe, and after a prolonged stay in Italy and Berlin travelled in Egypt and Syria. In 1850 he returned to the United States, and published his first book, "Nile Notes of a Howadji." He soon after joined the editorial staff of the "New York Tribune," and in the summer of 1851 wrote a series of letters to that journal from various watering places, which were afterward collected in a volume under the title of " Lotus Eating." His second book, however, was "The Howadji in Syria," published in 1852. In the autumn of 1852 " Putnam's Monthly" was commenced in New York, of which Mr. Curtis was one of the original editors, and with which he continued connected till the magazine ceased to exist.

In the mean time it had passed into the hands of the firm of Dix, Edwards, and co., in which Mr. Curtis was a special partner, pecuniarily responsible, but taking no part in its commercial management. In the spring of 1857 the house was found to be insolvent for a large amount, and Mr. Curtis sank his private fortune in the endeavor to save its creditors from loss, which he finally accomplished in 1873. Portions of his contributions to the magazine were subsequently published under the titles of "The Potiphar Papers" (1853) and "Prue and I " (1856). As a lyceum lecturer, upon which field of labor Mr. Curtis entered in 1853, he has met with great success. He has delivered several orations and poems before literary societies, and holds a high rank as a popular orator. In the presidential canvass of 1856 he enlisted with great zeal as a public speaker on behalf of the republican party. In the winter of 1858 he advocated the rights of woman in a lecture entitled " Fair Play for "Women." To the current literature of the day he has been a constant contributor since 1853, through "Harper's Monthly," and since the autumn of 1857 through "Harper's Weekly " newspaper, of which journal he is now the principal editor.

In 1858-'9 he wrote for this paper a novel entitled "Trumps," which was published in a volume in 1862. Upon the establishment of "Harper's Bazar " in 1867, he began a series of papers under the title of "Manners upon the Road," which was continued weekly until the spring of 1873. In 1871 President Grant appointed him one of a commission to draw up rules for the regulation of the civil service; and he was elected chairman of the commission and of the advisory board in which it was subsequently merged. In March, 1873, he resigned because of essential differences of views between him and the president in regard to the enforcement of the rules. Mr. Curtis was a delegate to the republican national conventions of 1860 and 1864, which nominated Mr. Lincoln; and in the latter year he was the republican candidate for congress in the first district of New York, but was defeated. In 1862 President Lincoln offered him the post of consul general in Egypt, which he declined. In 1867 he was elected one of the delegates at large to the constitutional convention of New York, in which he was chairman of the committee on education. In 1868 he was a republican presidential elector.

Since 1864 he has been one of the regents of the university of the state of New York.