Bertrand A. Goldgar *58

Bertrand Goldgar, the John N. Bergstrom Professor of Humanities and the longest-serving faculty member in the history of Lawrence University (Wisconsin), died Oct. 14, 2009. He was 81.

Goldgar earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Vanderbilt in 1948 and 1949, and then taught at Clemson. After Army service during the Korean War, he enrolled at Princeton and received his Ph.D. in English in 1958. He had already begun teaching at Lawrence in 1957.

An eminent English literary scholar, Goldgar specialized in the works of Fielding and Swift. In recent decades, he turned to historical editing of important 18th-century texts. Most recently he was one of the editors of the Cambridge edition of the complete works of Swift. He had written books on Swift and Walpole, as well as many scholarly articles and reviews.

Among his honors, Goldgar received an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship in 1973 and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 1980. Since 1968, he had spent almost every summer researching rare books at the British Library in London. He was known for his openness, friendship, and accessibility to his students.

Goldgar is survived by his wife of nearly 60 years, Corinne; a son, Ben; a daughter, Anne ’81; and two granddaughters.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.