O'Connor, William van (1915-1966).

American professor of English.

Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1915, and educated at Syracuse and Columbia Universities, O'Connor taught at Ohio State, University of Minnesota and University of California at Davis. Much in demand as a visiting scholar, O'Connor produced many articles, reviews and books, including studies of Wallace Stevens and William Faulkner. He also wrote poetry, fiction and drama. He died, suddenly, in 1966.

William Van O'Connor (1915-1966) was an American literary critic, editor, educator, and author.

O'Connor was born in Syracuse, New York, on January 15, 1915, the son of Sarsfield and Violet Belle (McKnight) O'Connor. He attended Christian Brothers Academy and graduated from Syracuse University in 1936. After receiving an M.A. at Syracuse University in 1937, he attended Columbia University from which he earned his Ph.D. degree in 1947.

Prior to World War II, O'Connor taught at Ohio State University, 1940-1941, and at Louisiana State University, 1941-1913. A tour in the United States Army which included service in New Guinea from 1943-1946 saw him rise to the rank of Staff Sergeant. After being discharged, he taught at the University of Minnesota, 1946-1962, and at the University of California at Davis, 1962-1966, in the latter case as chairman of the English department. He received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, 1946-1947, acted as executive editor of American Quarterly, 1949-1951, served as Berg Professor of English and American literature at New York University, 1958, and was a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Liel, Belgium, 1953-1954, and at the University of Hull, England, 1964-1965.

O'Connor was a prolific literary critic, writer and editor. To his credit are monographs entitled New Woman of the Renaissance (with his wife), 1942; Climates of Tragedy, 1943; Sense and Sensibility in Modern Poetry, 1918; The Shaping Spirit: a Study of Wallace Stevens, 1950; An Age of Criticism, 1900-1950, 1952; The Tangled Fire of William Faulkner, 1954; Modern Prose, Form and Structure, 1958; William Faulkner, 1959; The Grotesque, An American Literary Genre, 1962; A Key to American Literature, 1962; The New University Wits, 1963; Ezra Pound, 1963; Religion and American Literature, with Robert Wiggin and Joyce Cary, 1966. O'Connor also edited Forms of Modern Fiction: Essays Collected in Honor of Joseph Warren Beach, 1948; the six volume series Twentieth Century Literature in America (with Frederick J. Hoffman), of which his own An Age of Criticism was part; a three volume History of the Arts in Minnesota, 1958; A Casebook on Ezra Pound (with Edward Stone); and Seven Modern American Novelists, 1964. He also published a book of short stories, Campus on the River, 1950, and a volume of poetry, High Meadow, 1964.

On January 23, 1942, O'Connor married Mary Theresa Allen, and the couple subsequently became the parents of two daughters, Willa Van and Ellen Lee, and a son, Jewett Marion. O'Connor died at Davis, California, on September 26, 1966, at the age of fifty-one.