Tanselle, G. Thomas (George Thomas), 1934-

G. Thamas Tanselle served for twenty-eight years (1978-2006) as the Vice President of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; since 1980 he has also been Adjunct Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Before his move to New York in 1978, he had taught at the University of Wisconsin for eighteen years and had held Guggenheim (1969-70), ACLS (1973-74), and NEH (1977-78) Fellowships. He has lectured widely and has published books and articles (amounting in all to over 400 items) in the fields of American literature, printing and publishing history, descriptive and analytical bibliography, book collecting, textual criticism and scholarly editing, and literary and textual theory. He has been especially concerned to publicize the importance of collecting and preserving original materials and to combat the practice of replacing them with reproductions; to show the integral relationship between book-production history (including authorial intention) and reception history; to clarify the issues involved in textual criticism; and to develop new standards for the physical analysis and description of printed books.

From the guide to the G. Thomas Tanselle papers, 1960-2005, 1970-2004, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)