Louis D. Rubin Jr.
Louis Decimus Rubin Jr. (November 19, 1923 – November 16, 2013) was a noted American literary scholar and critic, writing teacher, publisher, and writer.
Early life and education
Louis D. Rubin Jr. was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the eldest of the three children of Louis D. Rubin Sr. and Jeanette Weinstein Rubin.
Journalism and early academic career
Rubin's early ambition was to be a journalist. In his memoir, An Honorable Estate: My Time in the Working Press, Rubin describes a career that began with covering local news and sports for several Charleston newspapers and at the Army paper at Ft. Benning during the war, then continued after the war with stints as a reporter, editor, and rewrite man for papers in Hackensack, NJ and Staunton, VA, and with the Associated Press in Richmond, VA.
In his years at Hopkins, a period during which he married Eva Redfield in 1951 and worked part-time as a newspaper
In 1956 and 1957 Rubin briefly returned to journalism as an editorial writer for the
Years at Hollins College and UNC–Chapel Hill
Rubin joined the faculty at Hollins College (now Hollins University) in 1957,[7] soon becoming a full professor and chairman of the Department of English.[11] He brought noted authors such as Eudora Welty, Howard Nemerov and William Golding to campus as writers-in-residence, founded the Hollins Critic literary journal, and in 1960 established a co-ed graduate-level creative writing program at the women's college.[11] Rubin's tenure at Hollins (1957–67) coincided with societal changes that saw women from the school aspiring to make a mark professionally in the arts, the sciences, and in business. He served as mentor and writing teacher to many of them, including novelists Lee Smith, Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, Annie Dillard, and Sylvia Wilkinson; poets Jane Gentry Vance and Elizabeth Seydel Morgan; literary editor Shannon Ravenel; literary critics Anne Goodwyn Jones and Lucinda MacKethan; and many more.[11] During this period he also published a number of influential critical studies, including The Faraway Country: Writers of the Modern South (1963), and founded the Southern Literary Studies series at Louisiana State University Press.[7]
Rubin moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1967 to join the faculty of the Department of English at the University of North Carolina as professor, and later was named to the University Distinguished Professor chair there.[7] He continued to be a leading voice in the study of the American South, co-founding the Southern Literary Journal with C. Hugh Holman, and co-founding the Society for the Study of Southern Literature there.[7] His publications included major bibliographic, historical, and critical volumes, including A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of Southern Literature (1969) and The History of Southern Literature (1985) that solidified the field of study that his first book had helped to establish.[1] Many of Rubin's students at UNC-Chapel Hill went on to become noted scholars in their own right, and he continued to teach courses in creative writing and English to future novelists including Jill McCorkle and Kaye Gibbons. He also helped establish the careers of many literary scholars, among them Joseph M. Flora, Fred Hobson, and MaryAnn Wimsatt. He retired from teaching in 1989.[7]
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
In 1982, Rubin and his former student, Shannon Ravenel, co-founded
Notable works
Literary history and criticism
- Southern Renascence: The Literature of the Modern South (coedited with Robert D. Jacobs, 1953)
- Thomas Wolfe: The Weather of His Youth (1955)
- No Place on Earth: Ellen Glasgow, James Branch Cabell, and Richmond-in-Virginia (1959)
- The Faraway Country: Writers of the Modern South (1963)
- The Curious Death of the Novel: Essays in American Literature (1967)
- The Teller in the Tale (1967)
- George W. Cable: The Life and Times of a Southern Heretic (1969)
- A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of Southern Literature (editor, 1969)
- The Writer in the South (1972)
- Black Poetry in America: Two Essays in Interpretation (1974)
- William Elliott Shoots a Bear: Essays on the Southern Literary Imagination (1976)
- The Wary Fugitives: Four Poets and the South (1978)
- The American South: Portrait of a Culture (editor, 1980)
- A Gallery of Southerners (1982)
- The History of Southern Literature (editor, 1985)
- The Edge of the Swamp: A Study in the Literature and Society of the Old South (1989)
- The Mockingbird in the Gum Tree: A Literary Gallimaufry (1991)
- Babe Ruth's Ghost: And Other Historical and Literary Speculations (1996)
- Where the Southern Cross the Yellow Dog: On Writers and Writing (2005)
History, memoir, and short fiction
- Virginia: A Bicentennial History (1977)
- The Boll Weevil and the Triple Play (1979)
- Before the Game (1988)
- Small Craft Advisory: A Book about the Building of a Boat (1991)
- Seaports of the South: A Journey (1998)
- A Memory of Trains: The Boll Weevil and Others (2000)
- An Honorable Estate: My Time in the Working Press (2001)
- My Father's People: A Family of Southern Jews (2002)
- The Summer the Archduke Died: On Wars and Warriors (2008)
- Uptown and Downtown in Old Charleston: Sketches and Stories (2010)
Anthologies and writing instruction
- The Literary South (1979)
- The Algonquin Literary Quiz Book (with Julia Randall and Jerry Leith Mills, 1990)
- A Writer's Companion (with Jerry Leith Mills, 1995)
Novels
- The Golden Weather (1961)
- Surfaces of a Diamond (1981)
- The Heat of the Sun (1995)
See also
- Library of Virginia
- Fellowship of Southern Writers
- List of Guggenheim Fellowships Awarded in 1957
- North Carolina Award
- Sam Ragan Awards
References
- ^ ISBN 0807126926. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
Bassett, John A. Rubin, Louis D., Jr.
- ^ ISBN 0807130974.
- ^ "Dr Louis Decimus Rubin, Jr. (1923-2013)". Find a Grave. Retrieved October 9, 2014.
- ^ ISBN 0807128082.
weinstein.
- ISBN 0865548668.
- ISBN 0912697105.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Davis, David A. "Louis D. Rubin (1923—)". Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
- ^ ISBN 0807127329.
- ISBN 0674018761.
- ISBN 0871135337.
- ^ ISBN 0807122432.
- ^ McClurg, Jocelyn (22 September 1989). "Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill: The Little Publisher That Could". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
- ISBN 978-1588382870.
- ISBN 0807827576.
- ^ Kelley, Pam (17 April 2011). "How a Little Publisher Made Good with Great Writing". Raleigh News & Observer. Archived from the original on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
- ^ National Book Critics Circle. "Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
- ^ North Carolina Writers Network. "North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame 1977". North Carolina Writers Network. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
External links
- Louis D. Rubin, Jr. at Library of Congress, with 68 library catalog records
- Louis D. Rubin (Sr.) at LC Authorities, with 3 records