An internationally recognized scholar in the works of 19^th century poet Robert Browning, Boyd Litzinger taught at St. Bonaventure from 1959 to 1987.  His scholarship concentrated on the major Victorian poets, and showed a particular interest in Browning’s critical reputation.  Several of his books reviewed and collated the work of the critics, demonstrating the evolution of critical thinking about the poet over the intervening decades.  Litzinger’s work also included a well-received textbook in English composition and a novel of international intrigue starring a professor of Victorian poetry.

Litzinger was born April 2, 1929 in Johnstown, PA.  He did his undergraduate studies at St. Francis College and the University of South Carolina.  After receiving his bachelor’s degree in biology at the latter institution, he continued his education there, earning a Master’s degree in English.  He did his doctoral work at the University of Tennessee graduating with a Ph.D. in English in 1956.

Litzinger’s teaching career began at the University of Tennessee where he worked as a teaching assistant.  He continued as an instructor at Texas Technological University, then as an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina before joining St. Bonaventure University in 1959.  He was chairman of the English Department at St. Bonaventure in 1961-62; assistant, then associate dean and chairman of the Arts Division of the School of Arts and Sciences from 1966-69; dean of the School of Arts and Sciences from 1969 to 1974.

Litzinger died June 3, 1987.

The St. Bonaventure Archives hold some of Litzinger's papers and manuscripts.

Works by Boyd A. Litzinger

Books

*Robert Browning and the Babylonian Woman. Waco: Baylor University, 1962.

Time’s Revenges; Browning’s Reputation as a Thinker, 1889-1962.  Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1964.

Fiction

*Watch it, Dr. Adrian.  New York: Putnam’s, 1977.

Works as editor  

The Browning Critics (with K. L. Knickerbocker). Lexington: University of  Kentucky Pr., 1987.

Browning: the Critical Heritage (with Donald Smalley). New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970.

The Heath Reader.  Lexington: Heath, 1983.

*The Heath Reader.  2^nd ed. Lexington: Heath, 1987.

The Heath Reader (with Santi V. Buscemi). 3^rd ed. Lexington: Heath, 1990.  

Story: Fictions Past and Present (with Joyce Carol Oates). Lexington: Heath, 1985.

Articles in Journals & Books

“The Athenaeum Incident: Browning and His Son” Studies in Browning and His Circle: A Journal of Criticism, History, and Bibliography 3:2 (1975) 118-122.

“Browning's Measure of Man” Cithara 6:2 (1967) 33-40.  

"Browning's Reputation as a Thinker, 1889-1900." Tennessee Studies in Literature 4 (1959) 43-50.

 “Browning’s ‘The Statue and the Bust’ Once More” in Studies in Honor of John C. Hodges and Alwin Thayler. in Tennessee Studies in Literature, Special Number (1961).

*“The Catholic College: Models for the Future” The Catholic Educational Review 64:9 (Dec. 1966) 608-611.

“General Sherman Goes to the Theatre” (with Edward Eckert) Vignettes of Military History 98 (May 29, 1978)

“The Genesis of Hopkin’s ‘Heaven-Haven’” Victorian Newsletter 17 (Spring 1960) 31-33.

“Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Wild Vicissitudes of Taste” Critic 21:2 (Oct.-Nov. 1962) 600-601.

“Hopkins’ ‘The Habit of Perfection’” Explicator 16:1 (Oct. 1957) item 1.

“Hopkins’ ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’, Stanza 19” Explicator 20:1 (Sept. 1961) item 7

“Hopkins’ ‘Wreck of the Deutschland’, Stanza 33” Explicator 18:3 (Dec. 1959) item 19.

“Hopkin's ‘Pied Beauty’ Once More” Renascence 13:3 (Spring 1961) 136-138.

“Incident as Microcosm: The Prior’s Niece in ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’” College English 22:6 (March 1961) 410-411.

“Mythmaking in America: 'The Great Stone Face' and Raintree County” Tennessee Studies in Literature 8 (1963) 81-84.

“The New Vision of Judgment: The Case of St. Guido”  Tennessee Studies in Literature 20 (1975) 69-75.

“Once More, 'The Windhover'”  Victorian Poetry 5:3 (1967) 228-230.

“The Pattern of Ascent in Hopkins”  Victorian Poetry  2:1 (Winter 1964) 43-47.

“Paul Gallico” in Dictionary of Literary Biography 9: American Novelists, 1910-1945, Part 2. Detroit: Gale, 1981. 43-44.

“The Structural Logic of The Ring and The Book” in Nineteenth-Century Literary Perspectives: Essays in Honor of Lionel Stevenson. Durham: Duke University Press, 1974. 105-114.

“The Structure of Tennyson's 'The Last Tournament'” Victorian Poetry 1 (1963) 53-60.

“'To Seem the Stranger. . .'”  Hopkins Quarterly 1 (1974) 41-42.

“Two Notes on 'The Wreck of the Deutschland’” Victorian Poetry 21:2 (1983 Summer) 191-195.

“The Ultimate Utopia; or, Here Comes Plastic Man” Delta Epsilon Sigma Bulletin 18:1 (March 1973) 10-12.

Reviews 

The Barretts at Hope End: The Early Diaries of Elizabeth Barrett Browning ; Browning’s Lyrics / Eleanor Cook ; Robert Browning / Robert B. Pearson ; Robert & Elizabeth Barrett Browning: An Annotated Bibliography, 1951-1970 / William S. Peterson ; Browning Institute Studies, vol.2 ; Loss and Gain: An Essay of Browning’s Dramatis Personae / Lawrence Poston in Victorian Studies (June 1976) 533-534.

Browning’s Roman Murder Story / Richard D. Altick & James F. Loucks in Journal of English and Germanic Philology 68:3 (July 1969) 547-550.  

Browning's Trumpeter: The Correspondence of Robert Browning and Frederick J. Furnivall, 1872-1899 / William S. Peterson in Cithara 19.1 (1979) 51-53.

Catalogue of the Browning Collection, The University of Texas / Warner Barnes in Cithara 6.1 (1968) 80-3.

The Disappearance of God / J. Hillis Miller in Journal of English and Germanic Philology 63 (1964) 818-820.

The Journals and Papers of Gerard House ; The Sermons and Devotional Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins in Cithara 1:1 (Nov. 1961) 48-50.  

The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1845-1846 / Elvan Kintner in Cithara 10.1 (1970) 93-5.

A Reader’s Guide to Robert Browning / Norton B. Crowell in Journal of English and Germanic Philology 72:4 (Oct. 1973) 576-577.  

The Tragi-Comedy of Pen Browning (1849-1912) / Maisie Ward in Cithara 13.1 (1973) 98-100.

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Last updated:  03/02/06