of Harvard and President Samuel Wesley Stratton of MIT. They were tasked with reviewing the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti to determine whether the trial had been fair. Some criticized Grant's appointment to the Committee, with one defense lawyer saying he "had a black-tie class concept of life around him," but Harold Laski in a conversation at the time found him "moderate." Others cited evidence of xenophobia in some of his novels, references to "riff-raff" and a variety of racial slurs. A biographer notes that he was not a good choice as he was not a legal scholar and was handicapped by age. The Committee concluded that the trial had been fair, but its report included some measured criticism of the judge in the case, Webster Thayer. Judge Grant furnished the language that found "a grave breach of judicial decorum". Later Grant allowed that he was "amazed and incensed" at the biased comments Judge Thayer made outside the courtroom. In later years he was known to struggle with the judgment the Committee had rendered, though in his autobiography he took a "defensive, almost bellicose tone." He maintained a particularly acute animus toward Harvard Professor of Law Felix Frankfurter who published an article making the case for the defense in the Atlantic Monthly while appeals were still pending. Grant believed that Frankfurter's article served as the foundation of most criticism of the Sacco and Vanzetti case on the part of intellectuals throughout the world, a view in which he was seconded by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Howard Taft. Following that very public work, he returned to writing. First he produced another novel, The Dark Horse (1931), a study of society and politics in Boston and finally his autobiography Fourscore (1934) when he was 82. He died in Boston on May 19, 1940. Works (partial list) Novels The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl (1880) An Average Man (1884) The King's Men, A Tale of To-Morrow (1884) Face to Face (1886) The Knave of Hearts (1886) The Reflections of a Married Man (1892) The Opinions of a Philosopher (1893) The Art of Living (1899) Unleavened Bread (1900)The Undercurrent (1904)The Orchid (1905)The Law-Breakers and Other Stories (1906)The Chippendales (1909)The High Priestess (1915)The Bishop's Granddaughter (1925)The Dark Horse (1931) Autobiography Fourscore: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1934) DramaThe Lambs: A Tragedy'' (Boston:James R. Osgood & Co, 1882) Notes External links 1852