Purdy, Richard Little, 1904-1990

Richard L. Purdy was an Associate Professor of English at Yale University and a collector.

Richard Little Purdy was born in Middletown, New York on April 21, 1904. He was graduated from Yale College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1925, followed by a Ph.D from Yale Graduate School in 1930. Purdy held the position of Associate Professor of English at Yale University and fellow of Berkeley College, acting from time to time as assistant to the Keeper of Rare Books for the University Library (1931-36), adviser on Victorian literature (1954-70), and chief marshall for the Yale commencement exercises (1962-70).

While organizing an exhibition of Thomas Hardy materials for the Yale University Library in 1928, Purdy entered into correspondence with Florence Hardy and started his personal collection of Thomas Hardy books, manuscripts and memorabilia. As his research proceeded on a definitive bibliography of Hardy's works, Purdy came to know Howard Bliss, Sydney Cockerell, Dorothy Allhusen, and several other of Hardy's contemporaries. Purdy first gained recognition as a Hardy scholar in 1940 when he announced that the biographies of Hardy supposedly written by Florence Hardy were, in fact, written by Hardy during his lifetime and finished by her. Purdy's Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study, was published in 1954.

Though principally known as a Hardy scholar, Purdy also wrote about and collected other writers, including Robert Browning, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. His edition of Sheridan's The Rivals from the original Larpent manuscript was published in 1935 by the Clarendon Press. After his retirement from Yale in 1970, Purdy continued research on Thomas Hardy, publishing, with Michael Millgate, The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy in seven volumes between 1978-88. Richard L. Purdy died in Chatham, New Jersey, on August 7, 1990.