IN MEMORIAM
EDWIN TURNER BOWDEN, JR.
Edwin Turner Bowden, Jr., professor emeritus of English, died
May 27, 2006. Ed, as he was known to friends and family, joined
The University of Texas English Department in 1956 and retired
in 1994. After receiving his B.A. from Harvard University in
1948, Ed was honored with a Fulbright Fellowship at Cambridge
University, where he studied with F.R. Leavis. In 1952 he received
his Ph.D. from Yale University, where he taught from 1952-56,
before being recruited to Texas by Harry Ransom.
Ed was born on June 5, 1924, and belonged to the ‘great
generation’ that fought to protect and secure our freedoms
in World War II. Ed served in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1943-46.
At the memorial service held for him on May 31, 2006, his casket
was appropriately draped with the American flag.
The focus of Ed’s scholarship and teaching was American
literature, especially of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
His first book, The Themes of Henry James (Yale University
Press, 1956), addressed the question of the visual arts in James’s
fiction. Arguing that the visual arts “provide a link between
biography and literary criticism” and “a means of
interpretation of the novels themselves,” Ed devotes special
attention to the later novels: The Ambassadors, The
Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl. “These
final novels . . . provide the natural summary of James’ development
and presentation of theme, and by implication the development
of his own esthetic consciousness.” In his next book, The
Dungeon of the Heart (Macmillan Co., 1961), Ed turned to
the problem of human isolation in American fiction. Considering
the whole range of American fiction from James Fenimore Cooper
to J.D. Salinger, Ed suggests the different ways in which American
novelists represent the perennial “problems of individualism
and conformity.” The special merit of this book is its
willingness to engage a topic of real interest to most Americans
and to address this general audience in a way that is respectful
as well as clear, insightful, and interesting.
To help make more American literature available to general readers,
Ed next turned his attention to writers whose work had either
gone out of print or was available only in hard-to-find editions.
In 1962, he thus published The Satiric Poems of John Trumbull (University
of Texas Press, 1962), making available to many readers (the
Perry-Castaneda Library at UT has nine copies of this volume
on its shelves) the adventures of Tom Brainless, Dick Hairbrain,
and Miss Harriet Simper. That Ed’s literary interests should
extend beyond fiction to poetry in the tradition of Pope suggests
his intellectual and aesthetic breadth. This breadth is also
evident in Ed’s later bibliographical work on James Thurber,
Peter DeVries, and (especially) Washington Irving. A long labor
of love, his Washington Irving Bibliography (Twayne,
1989) appeared as volume thirty in The Complete Works of
Washington Irving, for which Ed was the textual editor.
While dedicating himself to American literary scholarship, Ed
also facilitated the scholarship of others in a variety of ways.
Throughout his career, he was active in working with the Harry
Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRC) on exhibits and publications.
In 1960, for example, he organized an exhibit titled ‘Familiar
Books: A Bibliographical Exhibit for the Undergraduate,’ aimed
at bringing students to the HRC and acquainting them with its
collections. Ed also had a long association with
the English department’s flagship journal Texas Studies
in Literature and Language. After years of various editorial
service to this journal, he was appointed its editor in 1975-76
and later as co-editor with William J. Scheick from 1977-1986.
Professor Scheick observed that Ed was extraordinarily conscientious
as an editor, sometimes even writing detailed reports to the
authors of manuscript submissions. Ed was elected chair of the
department’s Graduate Studies Committee in 1974,
and, in addition, served several terms on the Graduate Programs
Committee, influencing in important ways the direction of graduate
education in English for the benefit of our graduate students.
The range of his professional accomplishments and abilities
served Ed well as mentor to younger faculty and as advisor to
students. In the classroom, his approach to teaching American
literature was typically interdisciplinary, as he always encouraged
students to reach beyond the literary to the larger culture.
Ed’s teaching covered the full spectrum of English department
courses, from freshman English to graduate seminars, and he was
highly esteemed by his students, especially so in the upper-division
American literature courses for English majors. In the words
of one student in E338 (American Literature from 1865 to the
Present): “Professor Bowden is awesome.”
In his later years, Ed developed a range of interests beyond
the classroom and library. He discovered recycling long before
it became popular, collecting stray soft-drink cans left on campus
so that they wouldn’t simply go into the landfill. He was
a conservationist in other ways as well, eventually developing
an informed amateur’s interest in the fossils of Central
Texas, and in retirement, even becoming secretary of the Austin
Paleontological Society. Conservation went together with a social
conscience, evidenced by his work as a volunteer at El Buen Pastor
Food Pantry. As a scholar, teacher, colleague, mentor, and friend,
Ed Bowden made a valuable and enduring contribution to the English
department and the larger community of which it is a part. For
this legacy, the English department will always be grateful,
counting Edwin T. Bowden as one of its most distinguished members.
Major Publications
The Themes of Henry James. Yale University Press, 1956.
“Benjamin Church’s Choice and American
Colonial Poetry,” The New England Quarterly, 32
(June, 1959), 170-184.
The Dungeon of the Heart: Human Isolation and the American
Novel. Macmillan Co., 1961.
Editor. The Satiric Poems of John Trumbull. The University
of Texas Press, 1962.
Editor. Washington Irving, A History of New York. Twayne
Publishers, 1964.
“Peter De Vries – The First Thirty Years: A Bibliography,
1934-1964,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language,
6 (Supplement, 1965), 541-570.
James Thurber: A Bibliography. The Ohio State University
Press, 1969.
“The First Hundred Publications of the Humanities Research
Center of The University of Texas at Austin.” Humanities
Research Center, 1971.
Washington Irving Bibliography. Twayne Publishers,
1989.
Textual Editor. The Complete Works of Washington Irving.
Twayne Publishers, 1982-89.
Listings
Directory of American Scholars
Who’s Who in America
<signed>
William Powers Jr., President
The University of Texas at Austin
<signed>
Sue Alexander Greninger, Secretary
The General Faculty
This memorial resolution was prepared by a special committee consisting of Professors
James D. Garrison (chair), William J. Scheick, and Joseph J. Moldenhauer.
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