Campbell, Lily Bess, 1883-1967

Lily Bess Campbell was born on June 20, 1883 in Ada, Ohio. She received her B. Litt. in 1905 and her MA in 1906 from the University of Texas. After a long period of ill health, she began her professional career as Instructor in English at the University of Wisconsin (1911-1918) and received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1921. Though her first published work treated Victorian poetry (The grotesque in the poetry of Robert Browning. 1907), her major contributions to the academic field were made as scholar of Renaissance drama and an eminent Shakespearean authority. Campbell taught at UCLA from 1922 until she retired in 1950 (among the many students she influenced was dancer-choreographer Agnes De Mille). In 1923, she published Scenes and machines on the English stage during the Renaissance, a Classical revival, a work based on her 1921 dissertation. Her next important book was Shakespeare's tragic heroes : slaves of passion (1930). She went on to produce the first modern edition of The mirror for magistrates, based on originals in the Huntington Library in 1938. In his "Dedicatory Preface" to Essays critical and historical, dedicated to Lily B. Campbell (1950), Louis B. Wright (Folger Shakespeare Library scholar) wrote, "Miss Campbell's edition of the Mirror and its later augmentations perhaps will stand as her most enduring contribution to the advancement of Renaissance learning" (vii). Campbell later published Shakespeare's "Histories" : mirrors of Elizabethan policy (1947). In addition to her scholarly work, she published a satirical novel in 1929 entitled, These are my jewels. Lily Bess Campbell is remembered as a strong and early leader in the development of the Department of English and in UCLA's transition from an undergraduate college to a research university. While at UCLA, she served on the Faculty Senate. When the University of Chicago celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1941, Campbell was chosen as one of the 50 most distinguished American scholars and was granted an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. She also received a Litt.D from Ohio Northern University in 1940 and an LL.D from UC Berkeley in 1951. Campbell won the achievement award from the American Association of University Women in 1960, and was named Woman of the Year by the Los Angeles Times in 1962. Lily Bess Campbell died on February 18, 1967, leaving a sizable bequest to the university to provide assistance for doctoral students working on their dissertations. UCLA's Campbell Hall is named after her.

From the description of Papers, 1907-1968. (University of California, Los Angeles). WorldCat record id: 40979078

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