A professor and scholar of English literature, Mark Spilka was born August 6, 1925. He was educated at Brown University and, following service in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1944 to 1946, graduated with the class of 1949. He pursued graduate studies at the University of Indiana, completing his PhD in 1956. Between 1968 and 1973, Silka served as chairman of the Brown University English department. He was named the Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English in 1990. He was director of the National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar in 1974. He served as president of the Conference Editors of Learned Journals and the Modern Language Association in 1974-1975. His published works included critical studies of D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, and Charles Dickens. He was also an editor of various books, as well as the periodical Novel: A Forum on Fiction . He was previously an editorial assistant at American Mercury and an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. He served as a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute of Modern Letters at the University of Tulsa, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Indiana University. He was named a Harry T. Moore distinguished D.H. Lawrence scholar, an Indiana School Letters fellow, a Guggenheim fellow, and a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow. He had been president of the Dickens Society and the American Association of University Professors. A member of Temple Emanu-El, he celebrated his bar mitzvah at the age of 63. He counseled male batterers through the Brother to Brother program. At Brown he was vice president of his graduating class, a Francis Wayland scholar, editor of the Brown Daily Herald and Brunonia, and chief scriptwriter for the Brown Network. Phi Beta Kappa. He died March 15, 2001, in Providence, Rhode Island.
From the guide to the Mark Spilka papers, Spilka (Mark) Papers, 1990-2001, (John Hay Library Special Collections)
