Theophilus Parsons (1797-1882), a son of the noted Massachusetts jurist of the same name, was a Boston lawyer and literary figure best remembered for the legal texts he authored during his long tenure as Dane Professor of Law at Harvard. He was also a man of literary, philosophical, and religious interests, editing several journals and writing on a variety of topics (including Swedenborgianism, a preoccupation he shared with the Transcendentalists). Born in Newburyport and raised in Boston, Parsons graduated from Harvard in 1815 and went on to study law in the office of William Prescott; in 1819 he opened a law office in Boston. From 1822-27 Parsons lived in Taunton, Massachusetts, serving briefly as a representative to the state legislature. In 1823—the year of his marriage to Catherine Amory Chandler—he converted to the Swedenborgian faith. Though called by one of his contemporaries "really more of a littérateur than a lawyer" he effectively pursued both careers, building his legal practice while writing on literary and philosophical topics and editing journals like The United States Literary Gazette (which he founded in 1825) and The New-England Galaxy. In 1848 he accepted an appointment as Dane Professor of Law at Harvard, a position he held until 1870. In the 1850s Parsons published a succession of legal texts, most notably The Law of Contracts, (1853-55) which by 1904 had run through nine editions. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. noted that Parsons was ". . . almost if not quite, a man of genius and gifted with a power of impressive statement which I do not know that I have ever seen equaled." After leaving Harvard Parsons remained in Cambridge, pursuing literary interests.