Douglas Turner Day III (1 May 1932 – 10 October 2004) was an American novelist, biographer, scholar and critic. He was a popular professor of
English literature[i.e. Literature in the English language] at the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...
, where he taught for almost four decades.
Early life
Douglas Day was born in Colón, Panama. The son of a US Navy officer, he served as a fighter pilot in the US Marine Corps in the early 1950s. He took three degrees at the University of Virginia before joining the English faculty there in 1962.
Career
Day taught at the University of Virginia for 38 years; he was an early advocate of studying contemporary Hispanic and Latin American writers and literature. His study of the poetry of
Robert Graves, his first book of literary criticism, won the
Phi Beta Kappa
The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...
Prize for scholarly writing in 1963. Fluent in Spanish, he also edited a collection of plays by
Federico Garcia Lorca.
[
Day documented the turbulent life of English novelist Malcolm Lowry, the alcoholic author of '']Under the Volcano
''Under the Volcano'' is a novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957) published in 1947. The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the Mexican city of Quauhnahuac, on the Day of the Dead in Novemb ...
''. For that he shared the 1974 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 Biography.
[''NB: The award was split between Day and John Clive.'']
Previously, he and Lowry's widow Margerie edited the novelist's posthumous novel ''Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid'' (1969).
In 1973 he edited a 'restored' and definitive version of William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...
's '' Flags in the Dust'', which was originally published in truncated form as '' Sartoris''.
Other books by Douglas Day include ''Swifter than Reason: The Poetry and Criticism of Robert Graves'' (1963) and two novels: ''Journey of the Wolf'' (1977)— for which he received the Rosenthal Award for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
; and ''The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magon'' (1991).
Bibliography
* ''The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magon''. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991. .
* ''Journey of the Wolf''. New York: Atheneum, 1977. .
* ''Malcolm Lowry: A Biography''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. .
* William Faulkner's ''Flags in the Dust'' (1973); editor.
* ''Swifter than Reason: The Poetry and Criticism of Robert Graves''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963.
* Malcolm Lowry's ''Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid'' (1969); editor, with Margerie Lowry.
Notes
References
* Fox, Margalit. "Douglas Day, 72, Malcolm Lowry Biographer is Dead." New York Times, 19 October 2004.
* Sullivan, Patricia. "Douglas T. Day III; Writer, Educator." The Washington Post, 16 October 200
External links
Douglas Day
Swifter Than Reason: The Poetry and Criticism of Robert Graves by Douglas Day
{{DEFAULTSORT:Day, Douglas
1932 births
2004 deaths
American male biographers
National Book Award winners
20th-century American biographers
20th-century male writers