William Whittingham Lyman Jr. (January 3, 1885 – November 8, 1983), also known as Jack Lyman, was an American writer and academic, primarily in the field of Celtic studies.

Life and work

Lyman was born at Napa County, California, the son of

William Whittingham Lyman William Whittingham Lyman (born July 28, 1850, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – 1921) was the son of Theodore Benedict Lyman. He built the Lyman winery, now known as the El Molino winery. At one point Lyman owned the property of what is now t ...

and Mrs Sarah A. Nowland, and the grandson of

Theodore Benedict Lyman Theodore Benedict Lyman (November 27, 1815 – December 13, 1893), was the fourth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina. Biography He was born in Brighton, Massachusetts on November 27, 1815. He was the father of William Whittingham ...

. His father built the Lyman winery, now known as the El Molino winery. In 1905, while an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley, he was convinced by

Charles Mills Gayley Charles Mills Gayley (February 22, 1858 – July 25, 1932) was a professor of English, the Classics, and Academic Dean of the University of California at Berkeley between the fall of 1889 and July 1932. Biography Gayley was born in Shanghai to ...

to achieve an academic major in

English literature English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...

. Upon completion of his Master's degree, Gayley arranged for him to receive a university fellowship to travel to the University of Oxford to study Celtic languages with Sir John Rhys. After a year at Oxford, Lyman spent two years at Harvard University studying the

Irish language Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was ...

. He returned to the University of California, Berkeley to take up a post as Instructor in Celtic (then a tenure-track position) within the English department in 1911-1912. In the same year, Celtic appears on the list of approved majors in the College of Letters and Science and in the following year Lyman is named also as "Graduate Adviser" in Celtic. There he remained until 1922, whereupon he moved to Southern California and taught English at Los Angeles City College until his retirement. After retirement he and his family moved back to the family home near the

Bale Grist Mill Bale Grist Mill State Historic Park is a California state park located in Napa County between St. Helena and Calistoga. The park is the site of a water-powered grist mill that was built in 1846 is one of only two water-driven mills remaining west ...

north of St. Helena. Commenting on his long life, Ruth Witt-Diamant declared him to be the "oldest living poet". He was a poet of some renown, as mentioned by Josephine Miles: "In a legendary time in the Greek Theater in Berkeley at the end of the first world war, poets gathered around the visitor Witter Bynner with a great sense of inventiveness and praise. Names I have heard from that time were Genevieve Taggard, Hidegarde Flanner, Eda Lou Walton, David Greenhood, Jack Lyman." On January 1, 1921, he married the poet Helen Hoyt.''Poetry: A Magazine of Verse,'' 18:4 (July 1921), p. 209.
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Publications

As editor

* (With Dudley Chadwick Gordon and Vernon Rupert King). ''Today's Literature: An Omnibus of Short Stories, Novelettes, Poems, Plays, Profiles, and Essays.'' New York: American Book Company. 1935.

As author

* * * *

Unpublished memoirs

His typescript memoirs are held at the University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library and contain comments on many of his faculty colleagues as well as the circumstances of his departure from the university.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lyman, William Whittingham Jr. 1885 births 1983 deaths 20th-century American poets University of California, Berkeley alumni Harvard University alumni People from Napa County, California