Harden, Edgar F. 1932–

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Harden, Edgar F. 1932–

(Edgar Frederick Harden)

PERSONAL: Born February 10, 1932, in Scranton, PA; son of Clayton Edgar (an oil company executive) and Elizabeth (a homemaker) Harden; married Evelyn Adelaide Jasiulko (a professor), September 11, 1965; children: Edgar Frederick II. Education: Princeton University, A.B., 1953; Harvard University, A.M., 1958, Ph.D., 1960.

ADDRESSES: Home—Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada. Office—Department of English, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada.

CAREER: Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, instructor, 1960–62, assistant professor of English, 1962–66; Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, assistant professor, 1966–68, associate professor, 1968–77, from professor to professor emeritus of English, 1977–. Military service: U.S. Army, Military Intelligence, 1954–56.

MEMBER: Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada, William Morris Society.

AWARDS, HONORS: Canada Council grants, 1967–68, 1974–75, 1980–81, fellowship, 1969–70; American Philosophical Society grant, 1977; Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada grants, 1981–82, 1993–96, fellowship, 1986–87; National Endowment for the Humanities grant, 1989–93.

WRITINGS:

The Emergence of Thackeray's Serial Fiction, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1978.

Thackeray's "English Humourists" and "Four Georges," University of Delaware Press (Newark, DE), 1985.

(Editor) William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor) Annotations for the Selected Works of W.M. Thackeray: The Complete Novels, the Major Nonfictional Prose, and Selected Shorter Pieces, two volumes, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor) The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, two volumes, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1994.

Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero, Twayne (New York, NY), 1995.

(Editor) Selected Letters of William Makepeace Thackeray, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Thackeray the Writer, St. Martin's (New York, NY), Volume 1: From Journalism to Vanity Fair, 1998, Volume 2: From Pendennis to Denis Duval, 2000.

(Editor) The Luck of Barry Lyndon: A Romance of the Last Century by Fitz-Boodle, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1999.

A William Makepeace Thackeray Chronology, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2003.

An Edith Wharton Chronology, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2005.

A Henry James Chronology, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2005.

(Editor) William Makepeace Thackeray, The Snobs of England; and, Punch's Prize Novelists, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 2005.

Also contributor to Thackeray: "Vanity Fair," a Casebook, edited by Arthur Pollard, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1978, and to Dictionary of Literary Biography. Contributor to literary journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Edgar F. Harden is a retired English professor who has written extensively about Victorian English writers such as Anthony Trollope and especially William Makepeace Thackeray. In Thackeray the Writer: From Journalism to Vanity Fair, for example, the author writes expansively about Thackeray's earlier work. In the process, he presents his thesis that these early writings already revealed Thackeray's creative talents and genius. In a review in Victorian Studies, Craig Howes commented that the author's "informed commentary will certainly benefit students wishing to get an overall sense of Thackeray's early work, while scholars will welcome this addition to Harden's earlier commentaries on the serial fiction and the two lecture series." In A William Makepeace Thackeray Chronology the author presents much more than a mere chronology of the Thackeray's work. "This book fortunately is no mere listing of dates of publication and travels because the editor uses the format to quote from correspondence that makes important points about the novelist," reported Richard Mullen in the Contemporary Review. Mullen called the book "an admirable and enjoyable guide to a delightful writer."