Willson, Lawrence

Biography

Lawrence Willson was born in Lancaster, New Hampshire, on May 6, 1911. He received a bachelor's degree in English from Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1934 and earned a doctorate in English from Yale University in 1944. He taught at Delaware, Tennessee, Wesleyan, and Berkeley before coming to UCSB in 1947, where he was a professor of English, a Henry D. Thoreau scholar, and a longtime active member in the UCSB Phi Beta Kappa chapter. He retired in 1978 and died in Santa Barbara on January 28, 1996. A Lawrence Willson Memorial Lectureship was established later in 1996 and has been awarded to some of the most distinguished faculty at UCSB.

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