Renowned Boswell scholar
Marshall Waingrow, an expert on 18th-century author James Boswell long affiliated with Yale's Boswell Editions publishing project, died in Portland, Oregon, on Jan. 25. He was 83.
Waingrow was the editor of "The Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell Relating to the Making of the 'Life of Johnson,'" which appeared in 1969 as the second volume in the Yale Boswell Editions Research Series. The volume was re-issued in 2001.
His "James Boswell's 'Life of Johnson': An Edition of the Original Manuscript in Four Volumes, Vol. 1, 1709-1765," appeared in 1994, published by Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press. Waingrow developed a transcription system to deal with the mountainous hoard of Boswell's revisions, additions and deletions -- creating a heavily revised master narrative into which are linked multifarious "papers apart." The book shows the biography in all stages of composition, from first drafts through to printed proofs and revisions. Waingrow's system has also been used in subsequent volumes of the series.
Waingrow's volumes, says Gordon Turnbull, current general editor of the Yale Boswell Editions, "re-ignited scholarly debates about Boswell's biographical theory, methods and achievement, and exposed and corrected the many errors in the printed 'Life' and all subsequent editions. Waingrow brought to light the wide network of informants, correspondents and other authorities whose input Boswell sought, and clarified his exacting principles of selection. His work decisively overturned the old Victorian caricature of Boswell as buffoon, or glorified Johnsonian stenographer, who somehow produced a masterwork, and thus laid the foundation of modern Western life-writing, by accident."
Waingrow's first major publication was an edition, with DeLancey Ferguson, of "Robert Louis Stevenson's Letters to Charles Baxter." His other works include the anthology "Eighteenth-Century English Literature," co-edited by Waingrow with Geoffrey Tillotson and Paul Fussell Jr., which first appeared in 1969, and has long remained a popular choice for college-level courses in this field.
Born on March 26, 1923, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Waingrow graduated with a B.S. from Harvard (1944), received his M.A. from the University of Rochester (1946) and his Ph.D. in English from Yale in 1951. In that year he joined the Yale English faculty as assistant professor, and the Yale Boswell Editions publishing project as a research assistant. In 1959 he joined the faculty of the Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University), where he taught until his retirement in 1989. He then returned with an appointment as research affiliate in Yale's Department of English in order to continue his work on the Boswell manuscripts, most of which are held in the Boswell collections in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. While at Claremont, Waingrow had continued to be affiliated with the Yale Boswell Editions. In 1976 he had been appointed to the project's editorial committee, later serving for several years as deputy chair. He was general editor of the Yale Boswell Editions, succeeding Frank Brady, 1986-1989.
After retirement, Waingrow made his home first in Roanoke, Virginia, then Norwich, Vermont, and moved in 2006 to Silverton, Oregon. He is survived by his long-time companion, Elizabeth L. Keyser, a scholar of Louisa May Alcott and of children's literature; his first wife, Hope Waingrow, of Edgartown, Massachusetts; his second wife, Carol Osborne of Palo Alto, California; the three children of his first marriage, Ellis Waingrow, of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts, Emily Hope Falke of Bakersfield, California, and Daniel Graff Waingrow, of Seattle, Washington; seven grandchildren; and a brother, Frederick Waingrow of Los Angeles, California.
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IN MEMORIAM
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