Bowden, Edwin T.

The son of Col. Edwin T. and Allie Myrick Bowden, Edwin Turner Bowden, Jr. (1924-2006) graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy before entering Harvard University in 1942. From 1943 through 1946, he served in the U. S. Army Air Forces as a weather observer in the American Theater of Operations, attaining the rank of corporal by the time of his honorable discharge. Following the war, Bowden graduated from Harvard in 1948, studied at Cambridge University on a Fulbright Fellowship from 1949 through 1950, and received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University in 1949 and 1952, respectively.

Bowden taught at Yale until 1956, when he joined the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of English. His teaching and research focused on American literature, including the work of Henry James, Washington Irving, and Peter De Vries. From 1967 through 1986, Bowden also edited the English Department’s journal Texas Studies in Literature and Language . As an editor and author, Bowden published numerous works, including The Themes of Henry James (1956), The Satiric Poems of John Trumbull (1962), and Peter De Vries: A Bibliography, 1934 to 1977 (1978). After his retirement in 1994, he served as secretary of the Austin Paleontological Society and volunteered at the El Buen Pastor Food Pantry.

In 1948, Bowden married Ann Haddon, and the couple had three children before divorcing in 1969. The next year, Bowden married Mary Weatherspoon, with whom he had two children.

From the guide to the Bowden, Edwin Turner, Jr. papers 2011-147., [ca. 1924]-2006, (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin)

Edwin T. Bowden (1924-2006) was an American literary historian and biographer. Following his B.A. from Harvard University in 1948, Bowden received a Fulbright Fellowship at Cambridge University, where he studied with F.R. Leavis, and then a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1952. Bowden taught briefly at Yale (1952-1956) but spent the majority of his career at the University of Texas (1956-1994). His area of concentration was 18th and 19th century American literature and poetry, and he wrote several scholarly biographies on American writers, including James Thurber, Peter DeVries, and Washington Irving.

Peter De Vries (1910-1993) was an American comic novelist and editor. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he studied at Calvin College and Northwestern University. He was editor for Poetry magazine from 1938 to 1944 and then joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine, where he worked for more than forty years (1944 to 1987). Notable works by him include Comfort Me With Apples (1956), The Blood of the Lamb (1961), and Cat's Pyjamas (1968).

From the guide to the Edwin T. Bowden Collection Relating to Peter De Vries, 1936-1990, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)