Richard D. Altick Papers

Richard D. Altick was born in 1915. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in 1936 and received an honorary Litt. D. from F & M in 1964. He received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 and then taught English at F & M from 1941 to 1945 and at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio from 1945 until his retirement as Regent's Professor of English in 1982. He also served as visiting Professor to New York University in 1950 and Stanford University in 1956. He held a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Socieities, and his book, The Presence of the Present : Topics of the Day in the Victorican Novel (1991), won the Christian Gauss award from Phi Beta Kqppa as the Outstanding work of literary criticism in that year. The record of his publications includes some twenty-five books and hundreds of articles and reviews. Dr. Altick's primary interest has been in 19th Century English literature and social history.