Head and shoulders image of Richard Harris, Department of English; outdoor winter scene.

Bio/Historical Note: Richard Harris, member of the Department of English, earned a BA from the University of the South, an MA from Florida State University, and a PhD from Iowa State University. Harris edited the Old Icelandic Hjalmþés saga for his dissertation while in Reykjavík on a Fulbright Grant for Graduate Research (1965-67). His early publications, while teaching at Umeå University in Sweden (1971-72), were concerned with Old Icelandic and Old English literature and their inter-connections. He then undertook research in Reykjavík and London on the collaborative activities of William Morris and Eiríkur Magnússon, resulting in several articles and the discovery of 75 letters from Morris to Magnússon which had sat unknown for some decades in a shoebox in a cupboard at the National Library of Iceland. His work with the 17th-century English antiquaries, begun in the late 70s and supported by SSHRCC (1983-85), produced 'A Chorus of Grammars': The Correspondence of George Hickes and his Collaborators on the Thesaurus linguarum septentrionalium, a 492-page volume published with the aid of a CFH grant (Pontifical Institute, Toronto, 1992).

Bio/Historical Note: Image appeared in 11 Apr. 1997 issue of OCN.