Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Lewis P. Simpson (1916-2005)

Lewis P. Simpson (1916-2005) by Fred Hobson The death of Lewis P. Simpson in April 2005 brought to an end the career of the scholar called by Eugene Genovese “our greatest cultural historian of the South.” That career spanned the second half of the twentieth century and extended into the twenty-fi rst, for Lewis Simpson, well into his mid-eighties, was still producing the magisterial essays that had defi ned his work from the beginning. A native Texan, he spent his career as professor of English at Louisiana State University and — after 1965 — as co-editor of the Southern Review, that literary quar- terly founded in the 1930s by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, then restored by Simpson after a quarter-century hibernation. When I fi rst met Lewis Simpson, about 1980, I was taken by his Texas accent and his self-eff acing, easy-going demeanor; he might well have been the small town Texas lawyer and county judge his father had been. But, early on, I found in his essays a total commitment to intellectual life; his was, as Andrew Delbanco has put it, “one of the great instances of the life of the mind lived to the utmost.” I always saw in http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Southern Literary Journal University of North Carolina Press

Lewis P. Simpson (1916-2005)

Hobson, Fred C., --
The Southern Literary Journal , Volume 38 (1) – Dec 14, 2005
Download PDF
2 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-north-carolina-press/lewis-p-simpson-1916-2005-epD9SLPjf7

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 the Southern Literary Journal and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of English.
ISSN
1534-1461

Abstract

by Fred Hobson The death of Lewis P. Simpson in April 2005 brought to an end the career of the scholar called by Eugene Genovese “our greatest cultural historian of the South.” That career spanned the second half of the twentieth century and extended into the twenty-fi rst, for Lewis Simpson, well into his mid-eighties, was still producing the magisterial essays that had defi ned his work from the beginning. A native Texan, he spent his career as professor of English at Louisiana State University and — after 1965 — as co-editor of the Southern Review, that literary quar- terly founded in the 1930s by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, then restored by Simpson after a quarter-century hibernation. When I fi rst met Lewis Simpson, about 1980, I was taken by his Texas accent and his self-eff acing, easy-going demeanor; he might well have been the small town Texas lawyer and county judge his father had been. But, early on, I found in his essays a total commitment to intellectual life; his was, as Andrew Delbanco has put it, “one of the great instances of the life of the mind lived to the utmost.” I always saw in

Journal

The Southern Literary Journal – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Dec 14, 2005

There are no references for this article.