Robert Dale Richardson III (June 14, 1934 – June 16, 2020) was an American historian and biographer.

Early life

Richardson was born in Milwaukee, and brought up in

Medford, Massachusetts Medford is a city northwest of downtown Boston on the Mystic River in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the time of the 2020 U.S. Census, Medford's population was 59,659. It is home to Tufts University, which has its campus alo ...

, and Concord, Massachusetts. He graduated from

Exeter Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal comm ...

, in 1952, and from Harvard University, with a PhD.

Career

He taught at the University of Denver, Harvard University, Yale University, The University of Colorado, Queens College, City University of New York, Sichuan University, Wesleyan University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Richardson was known for his biographies of Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William James. ''Emerson: The Mind on Fire'' won the Francis Parkman Prize in 1996, and ''William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism'' won the Bancroft Prize in 2007. In the first half of his career, he published as Robert D. Richardson, Jr. Later, he dropped the "Jr."

Personal life and death

Richardson was first married to Elizabeth Hall; they had two daughters. He married

Annie Dillard Annie Dillard (born April 30, 1945) is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 19 ...

in 1988, after she wrote him a fan letter about ''Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind.'' He was program chair for New Voices at the Key West Literary Seminar. Richardson died in

Hyannis, Massachusetts Hyannis is the largest of the seven villages in the town of Barnstable, Massachusetts, in the United States. It is the commercial and transportation hub of Cape Cod and was designated an urban area at the 1990 census. Because of this, many refer t ...

on June 16, 2020, two days after his 86th birthday, from a subdural hematoma suffered in a fall.

Awards

* 2007 Bancroft Prize * 1990

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

* 1996 Francis Parkman Prize * Melcher Book Award

Works

This section lists only Richardson's book-length publications. For his dozens of essays, forwards, and reviews, see the author's official website. Biographical books * '' Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind''. University of California Press. 1986. *
Emerson: The Mind on Fire
'. University of California Press. 1996. * '' William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism''. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2007 *
First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process
'. University of Iowa Press. 2009. *

and the Teaching of Literature''. David R. Godine, Publisher. 2013.
''Nearer the Heart's Desire: Poets of the Rubaiyat: A Dual Biography of Omar Khayyam and Edward FitzGerald''
Bloomsbury. 2016.
''Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives''
Princeton University Press. 2023. Scholarly monographs * ''Literature and Film''. Indiana University Press. 1969. * ''Myth and Literature in the American Renaissance''. Indiana University Press. 1978. Edited and introduced collections * With Burton Feldman
''The rise of modern mythology, 1680-1860''
Indiana University Press. 2000. * Emerson, Ralph Waldo. ''Selected Essays, Lectures, and Poems''. Bantam. 1990. * With Allen Mandelbaum. ''Three Centuries of American Poetry''. Bantam. 1999. (Also published as ''A Treasury of American Poetry''.) * James, William. ''The Heart of William James''. Harvard University Press. 2010. * Thoreau, Henry David. ''October'', or ''Autumnal Tints''. Norton. 2012. * Khayyam, Omar. ''The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam''. Bloomsbury. 2016.

References

External links

"Author's website""An Interview with Robert D. Richardson", ''Bookslut'', December 2006
* * ttp://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v6n1/nonfiction/richardson_r/intro.htm "A Talk by Robert D. Richardson", ''Blackbird'', Spring 2007br>"Review - The pragmatic American: William James and our homegrown way of thought", ''Harper's'', January 2007
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Richardson, Robert D. 1934 births 2020 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Accidental deaths from falls Accidental deaths in Massachusetts American biographers Harvard University alumni People from Concord, Massachusetts People from Medford, Massachusetts Phillips Exeter Academy alumni Wesleyan University faculty Writers from Massachusetts Writers from Milwaukee Bancroft Prize winners