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SYNOPSIS OF THORSTEIN VEBLEN'S LIFE
SYNOPSIS OF THORSTEIN VEBLEN'S LIFE
1857: Veblen was born in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin to a Norwegian
immigrant family. The family later moved to Minnesota.
1874: Veblen entered Carleton College Academy in Minnesota. He graduated
in three years. He became romantically involved with Ellen Rolfe, the neice
of the president of Carleton College.
c. 1877: Veblen entered Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland
to study philosophy. He left Johns Hopkins to enter Yale University in
New Haven, Connecticut.
1884 Veblen: graduated from Yale with a Ph.D. in philosophy, but he was
unable to find a job and returned to the family farm in Minnesota. He spent
his time reading everything he could find.
1888: Veblen married Ellen Rolfe, despite his being unemployed and against
the wishes of her family.
1891: Veblen after seven years without a job entered Cornell University
in Ithaca, New York.
1892: J. Laughlin of Cornell was asked to head the economics department
at the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago had just been
created with funds contributed by John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil. He
took Veblen with him.
1899: Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class.
1904: Veblen published The Theory of Business Enterprise.
1906: Veblen fired from the University of Chicago for flagrant marital
infidelities. Veblen appointed to an associate professorship at Stanford
University in California. After three years he was forced to resign because
of further problems of a romantic nature.
1911: Veblen divorced by Ellen Rolfe. Veblen hired by the University
of Missouri as a lecturer.
1914: Veblen married Anne Bradley. Veblen published The Instinct
of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts.
1915: Veblen published Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution
.
1917: Veblen published An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the
Terms of Its Perpetuation.
1918: Veblen leaves the University of Missouri for a job with the
Food Administration in the U.S. Government in Washington, D.C. He later that
year becomes the editor of a New York literary and political magazine,
The Dial. He also publishes Higher Learning in America:
A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business
Men. Veblen
facetiously subtitled this work A Study in Total Depravity.
1919: Veblen published The Vested Interests and
the Common Man.
1920: Veblen's second wife, Anne Bradley, had a nervous breakdown and
died. Veblen later lectured at the New School for Social Research in New
York City.
1921: Veblen published The Engineers and the Price System.
1923: Veblen published his last book, Absentee Ownership and Business
Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America.
1925: Veblen achieves a long-time goal and publishes
his translation of the medieval Icelandic classic, The Laxdaela Saga,
(The Epic of the Salmon River Valley).
1926: Veblen retired from teaching and returned to Menlo Park, California.
1929: Veblen died in the Menlo Park, California area a short time before
the collapse of the New York stock market.
1933: Some ideas related to Veblen's thinking promoted by Howard Scott
as the Technocracy movement.
1934: A collection of Veblen's articles from perioedical
is published under the title Essays in Our Changing Order.
1936: Wesley Claire Mitchell, a student of Veblen and
noted economist, publishes a selection of Veblen's writings
as What Veblen Taught.
