Kevin P. Van Anglen ’75

Kevin, a retired professor of English, died at his home in Bedford, N.H., on Dec. 20, 2023, after a valiant combat against Parkinson’s disease.Sporting his signature deerstalker cap, Kevin established his personal brand as a freshman, long before the age of TikTok. We soon realized the breadth of the gifts that he shared so generously and for so long: formidable erudition, coruscating wit (often directed at himself), and peerless ability to tell complex shaggy-dog stories, preferably set in a distant outpost of the British Empire, whose half-dozen characters each spoke with a distinctive accent.

Kevin graduated from Trinity High School in Manchester, N.H. At Princeton, he majored in English and was a member of Campus Club; he later was an interviewer for the Alumni Schools Committee. After earning his Princeton A.B., he studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge University and completed B.A. (Honours) and M.A degrees. He went on to Harvard University, receiving his A.M. and, in 1983, his Ph.D. in English and American literature. His career was illustrious, and he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, Boston College, and Boston University until his retirement in 2015.

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 Kevin had an appealing old-school approach to English and American literature. His work while an undergraduate on The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau for Princeton University Press led not only to his continuing engagement as an editor with that project for 40 years, but also to his profound knowledge of the Transcendentalists and an abiding love for nature and the environment. Kevin was the recipient of numerous grants and awards; author or co-author of 14 books and 67 scholarly articles and reviews; editor of several academic journals; and director of the Thoreau Society and of the MIT GeoSpatial Data Center’s Advisory Committee on Geo Climate, Energy, and Water. Each accomplishment attests to his brilliant scholarship, the high regard of his peers, the affection of colleagues, and the admiration of countless students whom he had mentored during his decades of teaching.

Kevin maintained a prodigious correspondence with friends around the world, but as his Parkinson’s advanced, he found it difficult to write to them as he once had done. He bore this, as he did his other physical afflictions, with stoic forbearance.

Kevin’s is survived by his brothers, Sean, William, and James; two sisters-in-law; two nephews; and a niece. The Class extends its deepest condolences to them, as it does to all who knew and loved him as scholar, teacher, and friend.