Aileen Ward (1 April 1919 – 31 May 2016), was an American professor of English literature who won both a
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
and a
Duff Cooper Memorial Prize
The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or occasionally poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, C ...
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.
After earning a B.A. in English from Smith College in 1940, she enrolled in Radcliffe College, where she was awarded her M.A. in 1942 and a doctorate in 1953. Her dissertation was on poetic metaphor.
Academic career
Professor Ward taught at Wellesley and Barnard. She joined the Vassar English department in 1954. Later in her career Ward taught at Sarah Lawrence, Brandeis and New York University. She retired in 1990.
Ward spent nine years researching “John Keats: The Making of a Poet". The book won two major awards, the 1964
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
(in the category Arts and Letters (nonfiction)), and the
Duff Cooper Memorial Prize
The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or occasionally poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, C ...
*Ward, Aileen. John Keats: The Making of a Poet. New York: Viking Press, 1963.
*Ward, Aileen. The Unfurling of Entity: Metaphor in Poetic Theory. New York: Garland Pub, 1987.
*De, Quincey T, and Aileen Ward. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and Other Writings ... Edited and with a Foreword by Aileen Ward. New American Library; New York & Toronto; New English Library: London, 1966.
*Keats, John, Aileen Ward, and David Gentleman. The Poems of John Keats. New York: Heritage Press, 1966.
*Ward, Aileen. "Canterbury Revisited: The Blake-Cromek Controversy." Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 22 (1988).
*Ward, Aileen. "The forging of Orc: Blake and the idea of revolution." TriQuarterly 23 (1972): 204.
Personal life
Ward died on May 31, 2016. At the time she was still working on a biography of William Blake, as she had been for nearly 50 years.