Gordon S. Haight
American academic (1901-1985)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gordon Sherman Haight (February 6, 1901 – December 28, 1985) was an American professor of English at Yale University from 1950 to 1968. He was the author of George Eliot: A Biography (1968) and the editor of The George Eliot Letters (1954–1955).
Gordon Sherman Haight | |
|---|---|
Gordon S. Haight, from the 1923 yearbook of Yale University | |
| Born | February 6, 1901 |
| Died | December 28, 1985 (aged 84) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Yale University |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | English literature |
| Institutions | Yale University |
Notable works | George Eliot: A Biography |
Early life and education
Haight was born in Muskegon, Michigan, the son of Lewis Pease Haight and Grace Carpenter Haight.[1] He graduated from Yale University in 1923, and earned his Ph.D. there in 1933, with a dissertation on English poet Francis Quarles.[2][3]
Career
Haight taught at the Kent School and the Hotchkiss School as a young man.[4] He taught English at Yale University beginning in 1933,[5] was master of Pierson College from 1949 to 1953, and was a full professor from 1950 to 1968. He was recognized as an expert on author George Eliot.[6] His biography of George Eliot won the Van Wyck Brooks Memorial Award and James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 1980, he was invited to give the dedication speech when a memorial stone for Eliot was placed in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.[2]
Personal life
Haight married Mary Nettleton in 1937. He died at home in Woodbridge, Connecticut, in December 1985, at the age of 84.[2][7]
Works
- "Longfellow and Mrs. Sigourney" (1930)[8]
- Mrs. Sigourney, The Sweet Singer of Hartford (1930)[9]
- "The Publication of Quarles' Emblems" (1934)[10]
- "The Sources of Quarles' Emblems" (1935)[11]
- "Francis Quarles in the Civil War" (1936)[12]
- "The John William De Forest Collection" (1940)[13]
- "Cross's Biography of George Eliot" (1950)[14]
- "Dickens and Lewes on Spontaneous Combustion" (1958)[15]
- "George Meredith and the Westminster Review" (1958)[16]
- "H. G. Wells' The Man of the Year Million" (1958)[17]
- Adam Bede (1964, introduction)[18]
- George Eliot: A Biography (1968)[19]
- George Eliot's Originals and Contemporaries: Essays in Victorian Literary History and Biography (1992, published posthumously)[20]
Works edited by Gordon S. Haight
- Edward FitzGerald and the Rubaiyat (1942)
- Francis Bacon, Essays and New Atlantis (1942)
- The George Eliot Letters, 7 vols. (1954–55)[21]
- George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
- A century of George Eliot criticism (1965)
- George Eliot & John Chapman, with Chapman's Diaries (1969; first edition 1940)
- George Eliot: A Centenary Tribute (1982, with Rosemary T. VanArsdel)[22]
