Gerald E. Bentley Jr. ’52

Jerry graduated cum laude from Lawrenceville, a good beginning for a life of scholarship. At Princeton he majored in English and ate at Cloister. He rowed crew and ran track, and was the Nassau Sovereign ad manager. He joined the Society of Agnostics, Theosophists and Atheists as well as the Liberal Union. He roomed with John Graham.

After Princeton he earned degrees at Merton College, Oxford, a bachelor of letters in 1954 and Ph.D. in 1956. In 1985 he was awarded a doctorate of letters. The chief focus of his study and writing (30 books) and articles in such publications as The Times Literary Supplement was William Blake. He and his wife, Elizabeth Budd, collected books on Blake and gave their remarkable collection to the University of Toronto in 2007.

Jerry taught at the University of Chicago for four years, then went to the University of Toronto for the rest of his career, but was a visiting professor at a great number of universities, including Princeton; institutions in Algeria, India, and Australia; and The Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation in Lake Como, Italy. In 1985 he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada.

Jerry died Aug. 31, 2017. He is survived by his daughters, Sarah ’80 and Julia ’81. To them the class sends its sympathy, along with much respect for Jerry’s life of scholarly accomplishment.