Damrosch, Leopold, Jr. 1941-
(Leo Damrosch, Leopold Damrosch)

PERSONAL:

Born September 14, 1941, in Manila, Philippines; son of Leopold (a clergyman) and Elizabeth Damrosch; married Sheila Raymond (divorced, 1983); married Joyce van Dyke; children: (first marriage) John, Christopher; (second marriage) Luke, Nicholas. Education: Yale University, B.A., 1963; Cambridge University, M.A., 1966; Princeton University, Ph.D., 1968.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of English and American Literature and Language, Harvard University, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138.

E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and writer. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, assistant professor, 1968-73, associate professor, 1973-78, professor of English, 1978- 83; University of Maryland, professor of English, 1983- 89; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature, 1989—, chair of the Department of English and American Literature and Language, 1993-98.

WRITINGS:

Samuel Johnson and the Tragic Sense, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1972.

The Uses of Johnson's Criticism, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1976.

Symbol and Truth in Blake's Myth, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1980.

God's Plot and Man's Stories: Studies in the Fictional Imagination from Milton to Fielding, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1985.

The Imaginative World of Alexander Pope, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1987.

(Editor) Modern Essays on Eighteenth-Century Literature, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1988.

Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and Johnson, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 1989.

(Editor) The Profession of Eighteenth-Century Literature: Reflections on an Institution, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 1992.

The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1996.

(Editor) Samuel Johnson & James Boswell (electronic resource), Primary Source Media (Woodbridge, CT), 1997.

(Author of introduction) Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Signet Classic (New York, NY), 1999.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2005.

Contributor to scholarly journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Leopold Damrosch, Jr., is an educator who has written numerous books focusing on his academic interests in the Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, Romanticism, Puritan imagination, and the Enlightenment. In Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and Johnson, Damrosch presents his thesis "that the old order—the pre-industrial world and its values: hierarchical, patriarchal, humanistic …—survived the challenges that threatened its tranquillity during the age of Hume and Johnson by recourse to various expedients, or ‘fictions of reality,’" as noted by Papers on Language & Literature contributor Robert Ziegler. The reviewer added: "Chief among these fictions was the concept of consensus, the notion that all men gave practical or pragmatic consent to a belief in a common reality, however much their religious or metaphysical theories might perplex them." In the book, the author explores how these beliefs affected various forms of nonfiction writing.

The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit explores the Quaker movement and its radical member James Nayler, a prominent Quaker preacher, theologian, and writer in the seventeenth century. Naylor, along with others, emphasized that internal spiritual law supplanted any external moral laws. In his book, the author pays special attention to the Christ in flesh doctrine and how it led to Nayler's fall when his Christ-like demeanor and actions led some to bow down and worship him. He was accused of blasphemy following an incident in which he reenacted Christ arriving in Jerusalem by riding on horseback into Bristol on Palm Sunday with a trail of followers praising him along the way. In a review in Cross Currents, Donald K. Pickens wrote: "Damrosch has revealed an interesting and important affair in the history of the Quakers. After all these centuries Nayler has a sensitive interpreter of that event in Bristol." Charles W. Sorensen, writing in History: Review of New Books, commented: "Damrosch's remarkable ability to explore the complexities of a movement through a single incident and to write in such an engaging, captivating manner is a lesson for all scholars."

Damrosh turns his attention to a biography of a famous philosopher in Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius. The author covers Rousseau's life from his inauspicious upbringing to his time as an apprentice and servant in households to his eventual voracious reading habits that led him to become a leading thinker of his age. "A vigorous, lucid biography of perhaps the most influential thinker of his day, with plenty of juicy gossip about his extracurricular life," wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Margaret Heilbrun, writing in Library Journal, commented that the author's "greatest accomplishment may be that he will entice nonspecialists to turn to Rousseau … and undertake further study." In a review in

Booklist, Bryce Christensen wrote: "A compelling portrait of a vagrant titan."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 1, 2005, Bryce Christensen, review of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius, p. 14.

Bookwatch, February, 2006, review of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Boston Globe, April 12, 2006, Alan Helms, review of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Canadian Journal of History, April, 1999, Richard G. Bailey, review of The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit, p. 104.

Cross Currents, fall, 1998, Donald K. Pickens, review of The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus, p. 408.

History: Review of New Books, fall, 1997, Charles W. Sorensen, review of The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus, p. 20.

History Today, July, 1997, Barry Coward, review of The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus, p. 59.

Houston Chronicle, December 23, 2005, Steven E. Alford, review of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2005, review of Jean- Jacques Rousseau, p. 952.

Library Journal, October 1, 2005, Margaret Heilbrun, review of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, p. 79.

New York Review of Books, June 8, 2006, P.N. Furbank, review of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

New York Times, November 6, 2005, Stacy Schiff, review of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Papers on Language & Literature, fall, 1992, Robert Ziegler, review of Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and Johnson, p. 457.

Publishers Weekly, August 29, 2005, review of Jean- Jacques Rousseau, p. 43.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2006, review of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

San Francisco Chronicle, November 13, 2005, Troy Jollimore, review of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, p. M-1.

Washington Post, December 18, 2005, Michael Dirda, review of Jean-Jacques Roussea, p. BW15.

ONLINE

Beatrice,http://www.beatrice.com/ (November 16, 2005), "Author2Author: Leo Damrosch & Roger Pearson."

Harvard University Web site,http://www.fas.harvard.edu/ (April 28, 2006), Leo Damrosch, "Harvard's Libraries and the Quaker Jesus"; faculty profile of author.