Henry Jackson Van Dyke was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to Henrietta Ashmead and Henry Jackson Van Dyke, a respected Presbyterian clergyman. Henry was influenced by his father's role as minister, though the boy was not necessarily a model child. Later in life Van Dyke said the three men who had most influenced him were his father, General Lee and Alfred Tennyson, which speaks to the values of most importance to him: the dedication to honor and beauty and the willingness to fight for a cause.
He was a student at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and received an M.A. from Princeton University in 1876. He was considered an ideal student, active in a myriad of extracurricular activities along with his classes. Van Dyke often disguised how much he studied and was willing to involve himself in some youthful pranks, so as not to be considered a bookworm.
When he entered Princeton Theological Seminary in September 1874, it was with the understanding that he might not become a minister, since his real dream was to be a successful writer. Despite that, in 1879 he entered the Presbyterian ministry and, four years later, became the pastor of the famous Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City, where his preaching garnered him a reputation nationwide. He preached his first sermon on October 21, 1875 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, on "The Voice of God," about hearing God in nature, a theme that would resurface in much of his later writing.
Just as he was beginning his career as a minister, Van Dyke was simultaneously launching his career as a writer.
His first books, The Reality of Religion, published in 1884, and The Story of the Psalms , published in 1887, grew directly out of his role as minister and would be followed by many similar productions. By 1888, however, he was very much involved in the literary scene, publishing a sermon he had preached on the "National Sin of Literary Piracy," which attacked the American habit of printing pirated copies of foreign books.
The Poetry of Tennyson remained Van Dyke's main volume of literary criticism, though he wrote much about literature throughout his life, blending it with religion and nature. His next significant work was Little Rivers, published in 1895, which was a collection of essays about the value of the outdoors in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs and John Muir. Fisherman's Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things , published in 1899, was similar.
Van Dyke's short stories also grew out of his pastoral calling and often resembled parables. Such is the case with his immensely popular The Story of the Other Wise Man , published in 1896. Originally it was read as a Christmas sermon in his church and published in Harper's Monthly Christmas issue of 1892. This story, which has been published in at least eighteen editions in the United States and England and has been translated into many languages, fulfilled Van Dyke's criteria for a good short story. Those criteria were intentional brevity, singleness of theme, an atmosphere which enhances the value of the theme and a symbolic meaning.
After a very illustrious career as a minister, Van Dyke agreed to accept a Chairmanship as Murray Professor of English Literature at Princeton in 1900. He would retire from that position in 1923 just ten years before his death. He continued to write and publish a prolific body of work while in that position.
In his later years, he wrote many pieces extolling the virtues of literature to uplift and edify man while downplaying the need for art for art's sake. While many of his works are not popularly recognized today and critics view him as a man stuck within the Victorian principles, when he died at his home in 1933, he was widely mourned by his many admirers.