Hart, James D. (James David), 1911-1990

Hart earned his Harvard AM in 1933 and his PhD in 1936.

James D. Hart (1911-1990) was author of The Oxford Companion to American Literature, Director of The Bancroft Library (1970-1990), chair of The UC Berkeley Dept. of English (1955-1957, and again in 1965-1968), and a University Vice-Chancellor (1957-1960).

Served on the Modern Language Association's Advisory Editorial Board for American Literature (serial).

Biography

James D. Hart, a fifth-generation Californian, developed an early passion for fine books and fine printing. During high school at the Menlo School, Menlo Park, California, he came to know Edwin and Robert Grabhorn at the Grabhorn Press of San Francisco, and persuaded them to design and print The Menlo Musketeer, the school annual during Hart's senior year in 1928. Fine printing of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries remained a lifelong specialty of Hart's.

After earning his A.B. degree at Stanford University in 1932, he earned his M.A. degree in English at Harvard University in 1933, following it with the Ph.D. in 1936. Joining the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley in 1936 he commenced a long career of distinguished research, teaching, publication, and service at the University. His lectures on American literature were among the most popular offered in the Department of English. He served at chairman of the English Department in 1955-1957, and again in 1965-1968.

Hart's publications include works on Frank Norris, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Richard Henry Dana, this last the subject of his thesis at Harvard University. In 1950, Oxford University Press published his pioneering work, The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste . But his most widely known publication was his classic Oxford Companion to American Literature, which went through five editions during his lifetime, and remains a standard reference work.

He also served as vice chancellor at Berkeley from 1957-1960. Throughout most of his career at Berkeley, Hart served on the Academic Senate Library Committee, and also on the Subcommittee for The Bancroft Library. In 1961-62, he served as acting director at Bancroft, and in 1970 was appointed its permanent director.

Other academic appointments during Hart's career included visiting professorships at Upsala, Sweden in 1950 and Harvard University in 1964. He chaired the Marshall Scholarship Committee for the Western United States from 1959 to 1963. He was decorated a Commander of the British Empire in 1963 for promoting Anglo-American relations. In later years he served as a trustee of Mills College, Oakland, California, 1970-78, and again from 1979, and as a trustee Fine Arts Museums San Francisco, 1983 until his death.

Biography

James David Hart was born in San Francisco in 1911. He received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in American Literature from Harvard. He later became a faculty member of Berkeley as an English professor, held the post of Vice Chancellor of the Berkeley campus from 1957-1960, and was also the director of the Bancroft Library from 1969 to 1970.

He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Mills College, as well as being a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Antiquarian Society. Hart served as president of the Book Club of California from 1950 to 1960. Hart wrote and edited multiple books, including the Oxford Companion to American Literature. He also printed his own ephemera (mainly about the Western United States) in his home, the location of the Hart Press.

He married twice: Ruth Hart (died in 1977), and Constance Crowley Bowles Hart (who survived Hart) and had two children. Hart died in 1990 in Berkeley.