William Herbert Carruth, born on April 5, 1859, near Osawatomie, Kansas, received his B.A. in modern languages at the University of Kansas (1880), studied at the Universities of Berlin and Munich, and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University (1889, 1893). He served as Professor of Modern Languages and then German at the University of Kansas throughout his life. His many academic publications in German studies included textbooks, editions, and translations. In 1908 G. P. Putnam's Sons published his Each in his own Tongue and Other Poems, titled after a poem that first appeared about the turn of the century in the New England Magazine and that very quickly became internationally celebrated. In June 1882, Carruth married Frances Schlegel, who served as Professor of Modern Languages at Kansas until her death in 1908. They had one daughter. On June 10, 1910, he married Katherine Kent Morton. Carruth died in 1924.