Shelley, Philip Allison, 1907-....

Philip Allison Shelley was born in York, Pennsylvania, on 7 August 1907. He earned degrees from Penn State (1929) and Harvard (M.A., comparative literature, 1930; Ph.D., Germanic philology, 1938). With the aid of an Ottendorfer Memorial Fellowship, he studied at the German universities in Berlin and Goettingen in 1933 and 1934. Philip Allison Shelley became a member of the Penn State faculty in 1939 and headed the German Department from 1942 to 1962. He was named professor of comparative literature in 1954 and headed that graduate program from 1952 and the undergraduate program until 1970. He also was director of the General Education Program in Humanities and Social Sciences from 1964 to 1971. Active in the Penn State Faculty Senate for 20 years, he spent ten years as chairman of the Courses of Study Committee. He was the author of a number of scholarly articles and reviews, co-authoring An Outline History of German Literature, first published in 1948, with multiple reprints. In 1972, the year before he retired with emeritus status, he bequeathed his collection of 8,000-10,000 Anglica Americana Germanica books, letters, manuscripts, and drawings, to the University Libraries. When Philip Shelley retired in 1973, he received the title of Honorary Curator of the Allison-Shelley Collection, located in the Special Collections Library. Dr. Shelley died on 14 February 1974 at the age of 66.

Philip Allison Shelley was professor of German and Comparative Literature at The Pennsylvania State University and an avid collector, specializing in children's books and materials related to German influence on and interaction with American culture and literature.

The Simmons Series was created in honor of Lucretia Van Tuyl Simmons, longtime Head of the German Department at Penn State. The Simmons Series featured cultural events, primarily lectures and musical events, organized by the German Department and the College of Liberal Arts, presented free to the public. The series commenced during the 1946-47 academic year and ended after the 1961-62 academic year.