Robert D. Richardson

Robert Dale Richardson III (June 14, 1934 – June 16, 2020) was an American historian and biographer.

Early life

Richardson was born in Milwaukee, and brought up in Medford, Massachusetts, and Concord, Massachusetts.[1][2] He graduated from Exeter, in 1952,[3] and from Harvard University, with a PhD.[1]

Career

He taught at the University of Denver,[1] Harvard University, Yale University, The University of Colorado, Queens College, City University of New York, Sichuan University, Wesleyan University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Richardson was known for his biographies of Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William James.[1] Emerson: The Mind on Fire won the Francis Parkman Prize in 1996, and William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism won the Bancroft Prize in 2007.[1]

In the first half of his career, he published as Robert D. Richardson, Jr. Later, he dropped the "Jr."

Personal life and death

Richardson was first married to Elizabeth Hall; they had two daughters.[1]

He married Annie Dillard in 1988, after she wrote him a fan letter about Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind.[1][4]

He was program chair for New Voices at the Key West Literary Seminar.[5]

Richardson died in Hyannis, Massachusetts on June 16, 2020, two days after his 86th birthday, from a subdural hematoma suffered in a fall.[1][2]

Awards

Works
External video
Booknotes interview with Richardson on Emerson: The Mind on Fire, August 13, 1995, C-SPAN

This section lists only Richardson's book-length publications. For his dozens of essays, forwards, and reviews, see the author's official website.

Biographical books

Scholarly monographs

  • Literature and Film. Indiana University Press. 1969.
  • Myth and Literature in the American Renaissance. Indiana University Press. 1978.

Edited and introduced collections

  • With Burton Feldman. The rise of modern mythology, 1680-1860. Indiana University Press. 2000.
  • Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Selected Essays, Lectures, and Poems. Bantam. 1990.
  • With Allen Mandelbaum. Three Centuries of American Poetry. Bantam. 1999. (Also published as A Treasury of American Poetry.)
  • James, William. The Heart of William James. Harvard University Press. 2010.
  • Thoreau, Henry David. October, or Autumnal Tints. Norton. 2012.
  • Khayyam, Omar. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Bloomsbury. 2016.

Reviews

In the James book he even pauses, endearingly, at a tricky philosophical intersection, and allows, “This is not easy stuff.” These are intellectual biographies, which means that Richardson attempted to read everything his subjects read—which also means that he works just as hard as these death-haunted, pressed-for-time 19th-century giants who fascinate him. It's a formidable combination. He's a writer who rewards your trust, for the same reasons we learned to trust him on those sailboats far from shore—he knows what he's doing, and because he's restless, curious and fearless, he can take you where you might never travel on your own.[6]

To trace the subtle reciprocities between philosophizing and living is the ambitious task that Robert D. Richardson sets himself in his absorbing, if also frustrating, biography William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. [7]

References
  1. Roberts, Sam (June 24, 2020). "Robert Richardson Jr., Biographer of Literary Giants, Dies at 86". The New York Times. Retrieved June 24, 2020.
  2. "Prize-winning historian Robert D. Richardson dies at age 86". Associated Press. June 21, 2020. Retrieved June 21, 2020.
  3. "Robert Richardson '52", The Exeter Bulletin, Eric Gershon, Spring 1999
  4. MARY CANTWELL (April 26, 1992). "A Pilgrim's Progress". The New York Times.
  5. Barbara Chai (February 2, 2008). "Robert D. Richardson on Attracting New Writers to Key West Seminar". The Wall Street Journal.
  6. HAL CROWTHER (Spring 2007). "Long Walks on the Wild Side—Robert D. Richardson, Biographer". Blackbird.
  7. REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN (December 17, 2006). "The Pragmatist". The New York Times.
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