Lago, Mary M.

Mary McClelland Lago (1919-2001) was on the University of Missouri-Columbia Department of English faculty from 1977 to 1991. From 1989 until her retirement she held the endowed professorship, the Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair of English. Biographical Passages: Essays on Victorian and Modernist Biography Honoring Mary M. Lago (University of Missouri Press, 2000) describes her as a distinguished biographer, editor, translator, and scholar of Victorian and Edwardian literature. Her research interests included the intersection of British and Indian literature at the turn of the century and the Edwardian art scene. Mary McClelland was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received her B.A. in English from Bucknell University in 1940. She moved to New York and worked for the Friendship Press. While in New York she became involved with the Cantata Singers and the Dessoff Choir and met her future husband, Gladwyn V. Lago. They moved to Columbia, Missouri, where Gladwyn Lago assumed a faculty position in the Engineering School. While raising their two children, Mary Lago organized the Bach Singers where she was introduced to the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. Lago eventually returned to school and earned her M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1969) from the University of Missouri. After teaching as an instructor in the English Department from 1971-1977, she was appointed Associate Professor in 1977, full Professor in 1979, and named Professor Emerita in 1991. Lago died from cancer in 2001. Professor Lago was an authority on Rabindranath Tagore and E. M. Forster and wrote several books on each. She translated Tagore's works and was the author of numerous articles and reviews. Additionally, she wrote books on William Rothenstein, Max Beerbohm, Edward Burne-Jones, and Christiana Herringham. Her most recent book, India's Prisoner: A Biography of Edward John Thompson, 1886-1946, was published shortly before her death.

From the description of Mary Lago's correspondence to Martha S. Vogeler, 1971-1999. (University of Missouri -- Columbia). WorldCat record id: 742041928