Monroe K. Spears

Spears was born in 1916 in Darlington, South Carolina. He graduated from the University of South Carolina, where he earned a bachelor's degree, and he earned a master's degree followed by a PhD from Princeton University.[1]

Spears began his career as an English professor at the University of Wisconsin, followed by Vanderbilt University.[2] He joined the faculty at Sewanee: The University of the South, where he was the editor of the Sewanee Review from 1952 to 1961.[2] He was the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English at Rice University from 1964 to 1986.[2]

Spears was the author of several books about American and British poetry and poets, including W. H. Auden and Matthew Prior. He was also a contributor to The New York Review of Books. He was a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.[2]

Spears lived in Sewanee, Tennessee with his wife, Betty. He died on May 23, 1998 in Winchester, Tennessee.[2][3] He is the namesake of the annual Monroe K. Spears Award at Rice University.[4]

• Spears, Monroe K. (1968). The Poetry of W. H. Auden: The Disenchanted Island. New York: Oxford University Press. OCLC 907485381.
• Spears, Monroe K.; Wright, H. Bunker, eds. (1971). The Literary Works of Matthew Prior. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press. OCLC 977747024.
• Spears, Monroe K. (1971). Dionysus and The City: Modernism in Twentieth-Century Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press. OCLC 718660046.
• Spears, Monroe K. (1987). American Ambitions: Selected Essays on Literary and Cultural Themes. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9780801834141. OCLC 991934125.
• Spears, Monroe K. (1996). One Writer's Reality. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. OCLC 605348751.