Rachel McClellan
Died 2009
Rachel McClellan (née Pott) was the sometime managing editor of the Yale Boswell Editions, Yale University.
She was married to the distinguished Japanologist Edwin McClellan (1925-2009), Sterling Professor Emeritus of East Asian Language and Literature at Yale, whom she predeceased by just a few months.
Richard C. Cole
Died March 23, 2013
Richard Cole was the sometime Virginia Lasater Irvin Professor of English at Davidson College, North Carolina, retiring in 1993.
Cole received his diploma from Hamilton College in 1950 with honors in history and philosophy. He went on to Yale University, where he obtained his M.A. degree in English in 1951. After a short stint teaching at Manlius School, near Syracuse, NY, he returned to graduate study at Yale and earned his Ph.D. in 1955. Following his graduation, he was an instructor in English at the University of Texas in Austin, and then an associate professor of Radford College (now University) in Virginia, where he was promoted to full professor. In 1961, he began his long tenure as a full professor at Davidson College in North Carolina.
Cole was the elder son of Horace R. Cole, a postal supervisor, and Iris V. Cargill. He was married for over 50 years to Florence A. Mason (d. 2009).
Peter S. Baker
Peter S. Baker is a Professor of English at the University of Virginia. He received his B.A. from Columbia University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1978. Before his position at the University of Virginia, he was an associate professor of English at Towson State University in Maryland. Baker's scholarly work focuses on Old English and medieval literature. He is the author of Deconstruction and the Ethical Turn (1995) and the editor of The Beowulf Reader (2000). He has also published numerous articles on Old English language and literature and has developed font software for Anglo-Saxonists, including Junicode.
In addition to his work in medieval studies, Baker has contributed to Boswellian scholarship. He is co-editor, with Richard C. Cole and Rachel McClellan, of the two-volume The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1766-1769, which is part of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell. He also wrote the introduction to the correspondence between James Boswell and Edmond Malone in another volume of the Yale series, The Correspondence of James Boswell with David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and Edmond Malone.
Alexander Fraser of Strichen
Died 1794
Alexander Fraser was the son of Alexander Fraser (ca. 1700-1775), 7th of Strichen,1 and Anne Campbell (1692-1736). In 1764 he married Jean Menzies with whom he had at least nine children.
Fraser was granted the lands of Strichen, Aberdeenshire, in 1759, during his father's own lifetime. He was also the grandfather of Thomas Fraser (1802-1875), who in 1854 became the 12th Lord Lovat, following the reversal of the attainder of the 11th Lord, who was executed in 1747 following the Jacobite rebellion of 1745.
On August 25, 1773, Boswell and Dr Johnson continued their journey to the Highlands from their stay at Slains Castle. According to Boswell, "Mr Johnson was curious to see a Druid’s Temple. I had a recollection of one at Strichen which I had seen fifteen years ago. So we went four miles out of our road after passing Old Deer, and went thither. Mr Fraser, the proprietor, was at home and showed it. But I had augmented it in my mind, for all that remains is the two stones set up on end with a long one laid between them, as was usual, and one stone at a little distance from them. That stone was the capital one of the circle which surrounded what now remains. Fraser was very hospitable."
The stone circle in mention was since destroyed twice before being restored in the 1980s.2
Fraser's father was a long-time colleague of Boswell's father Lord Auchinleck in the Court of Session.
Charles N. Fifer
Died 2012
Charles Fifer was born in 1922 in Evanston, Illinois. He was educated at New Trier High School, Northwestern University, and Yale University, where he wrote his PhD dissertation on the correspondence of James Boswell.
During World War II he served with the 34th Infantry Division in Italy and France. In 1955 he married Norma Crow, a fellow English teacher who later taught for many years at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, CA.
Charles taught at Iowa State, Lawrence University, the University of Illinois, and at Stanford from 1956 until his retirement in 1991. In addition to teaching courses in 18th-century literature, which he once described as "one of the less inhabited periods," he was for many years the Director of Freshman English, a program that served the whole university by ensuring that every undergraduate had competent writing skills.
Thomas Crawford
Died 2014
Thomas Crawford (1920–2014) was an influential Scottish literary scholar and a pioneering figure in the academic study of Scottish literature. He was educated at Dunfermline High School and the University of Edinburgh. After beginning his academic career in New Zealand at the University of Auckland, he returned to Scotland in 1965. He then held a position at the University of Aberdeen, first as a Senior Lecturer and later as a Reader in English, until his retirement in 1985. His 1960 book, Burns: A Study of the Poems and Songs, is considered a landmark work that applied new critical methods to the work of Robert Burns.
In the field of Boswellian studies, Crawford edited the first volume of The Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple, which was published in 1997 as part of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell. He also authored Boswell, Burns and the French Revolution (1990).
Ralph S. Walker
Died 1990
Walker held lectureships or chairs at several universities, including Aberdeen and Yale, before, in 1955, he was elected to the Molton Chair of English at McGill University, from where he retired in 1970 as Professor Emeritus.
He was described, in an obituary in St Catharine's College Society Magazine, as "a quiet, gentle and courteous man, yet formidable as both scholar and administrator".3
Elizabeth Goldring
Elizabeth Goldring currently holds the title of Honorary Reader at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick.
She is best known for authoring Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist (2019), which won the Apollo 'Book of the Year' Award, and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the World of Elizabethan Art (2014), which won the Roland H. Bainton Prize for Art History.
Goldring is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Bruce Redford
Bruce Redford is currently Professor Emeritus in Baroque & 18th Century Art at Boston University.
Redford took a B.A. in English and American Literature from Brown University (1971-1975) and a B.A. in Medieval Studies from King's College, Cambridge (1975-1977), before going on to Princeton for a PhD in English Literature (1977-1981). He then went on to the University of Chicago, where he taught English for 17 years, the last eight of them as a full professor. In 1998 he moved to Boston University, as a University Professor and Professor of English. In 2003 he was also appointed Professor of Art History, and he has served in a variety of other administrative appointments during his time at Boston.
One of Redford's primary fields of interest has been the works of Samuel Johnson, and he has served on the editorial committee of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson since 1985. Most significantly, he edited the 5-volume Letters of Samuel Johnson (1992-1994) for Princeton and Clarendon Press.
In Boswellian circles, Redford is best known for editing the second volume of the Yale Boswell Editions’ manuscript edition of the Life of Johnson together with Elizabeth Goldring.