University Professor

• Greene, Richard. Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Women's Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
• --. Republic of Solitude: Poems 1984-1994. St. John’s: Breakwater, 1994. PS 8563 R3836R47 Robarts Library
• --. Crossing the Straits. Toronto: St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2004. PS 8563 R3836C76 Robarts Library
• --. Boxing the Compass. Montreal: Signal Editions, 2009.
• --. Edith Sitwell: Avant Garde Poet, English Genius. London: Virago, 2011.
• --, ed. Selected Letters of Edith Sitwell London: Virago, 1997;. Rev. ed. 1998.
• --. The Works of Mary Leapor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• --. Graham Greene: A Life in Letters. London: Little, Brown, 2007.

Charles G. D. Roberts was born on January 10, 1860, in Douglas, New Brunswick, and grew up near the Tantramar marshes by Sackville. Educated at Fredericton Collegiate School from 1874 to 1876, and at the University of New Brunswick from 1876 to 1879, Roberts quickly published his first book of poetry, Orion, and Other Poems (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1880; PS 8485 .O22 O7). He married Mary Fenety that same year, and they had five children up to 1892. After acting as schoolmaster in Chatham and Fredericton, he taught English and French at King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia, from 1885 to 1895. Three volumes of poetry came out during this period

In Divers Tones (Boston: D. Lothrop, 1886; PS 8485 .O22 I48)
Poems of Wild Life (London: W. Scott, 1888; PN 6110 N2R63)
Songs of the Common Day and Ave (Toronto: W. Briggs, 1893; B-10 0376)

and Roberts was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada this year. After resigning from King's College in 1895, and determining to work free-lance, Roberts separated from his wife, daughter, and sons in 1897, leaving Canada for New York City, where he stayed from until 1907, and then for Europe, first in Paris, by 1910 in Munich, and after 1912 in London, England, until 1925. During this period he earned his living from writing fiction, especially animal stories and romances, and non-fiction prose. He served during War World I in the 16th Battalion of the King's Regiment, then as captain at the London Canadian War Records Office, and last as a Major and a press correspondent in France. While living outside Canada, Roberts produced four volumes of verse:

New York Nocturnes and Other Poems (Boston: Lamson, 1898; B-10 6603)
Poems (New York: Silver Burdett, 1901; rev. 1907; PS 8485 .O22 A17)
The Book of the Rose (Toronto: Copp, Clark, 1903; Ps 8485 .O22 B6)
New Poems (London: Constable, 1919; PS 8485 O22N4)

In 1925 Roberts went to live in Toronto and his wandering, expatriotic life ended. He gave poetry recital tours in 1925-26. His wife Mary died in 1930. Late in his life, when Roberts was recognized as the father of Canadian literature, he brought out four more substantial volumes of poetry:

The Vagrant of Time (Toronto: Ryerson, 1927; PS 8485 .O22 V3)
The Iceberg, and Other Poems (Toronto: Ryerson, 1934; PS 8485 O22 I3)
Selected Poems (Toronto: Ryerson, 1936; PS 8485 .O22 A17)
Canada Speaks of Britain and Other Poems of the War (Toronto: Ryerson, 1941; cap Fisher Rare Book Library)

Roberts received many honours: he was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's first Lorne Pierce Medal and was elected President of the Canadian Authors' Association in 1926, and he was knighted on June 3, 1935. Before his death on November 26, 1943, he was married again to Joan Montgomery. Roberts is buried in Fredericton. See also

• Adams, John Coldwell. Sir Charles god damn: the Life of Sir Charles G. D. Roberts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. PS 8485 .O22 Z44 Robarts Library
• The Collected Poems of Sir Charles G. D. Roberts: A Critical Edition. Ed. Desmond Pacey, assisted by Graham Adams. Wolfville, Nova Scotia: Wombat Press, 1985. PS 8485 O22A17 Robarts Library.
• Collected Letters. Ed. Laurel Boone. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 1989. PS 8485 .O22 Z48 Robarts Library.
• Pomeroy, Elsie May. Sir Charles G. D. Roberts: A Biography. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1943. PS 8485 .O22 Z83 Robarts Library.

Inventor, civil engineer, and molecular physicist, William John Macquorn Rankine was born July 5, 1820, in Edinburgh. After he was educated at the University of Edinburgh, he became surveyor on waterworks and railways in Dublin and Drogheda in Ireland and later for the Caledonian Railway. During this time he made valuable contributions to the understanding of axle fatigue. From 1848, Rankine dedicated himself to study of thermodynamics and published over 150 scientific papers, especially on the conversion of work into heat, and vice versa. The model of events in this conversion is called the Rankine cycle. Created a fellow, Royal Society of Edinburgh, in 1849 and a fellow, Royal Society, in 1853, he was given the Queen Victoria chair of civil engineering and mechanics at Glasgow University in 1855. He wrote many standard textbooks for the period. He died on December 24, 1872, in Glasgow.

• B., G. C. [biography] The Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. XVI. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Rankine, William John Macquorn. A Manual of Applied Mechanics. London: Griffin, 1864. 3rd edn. TEM R Gerstein Library
• --. A Manual of Civil Engineering. 5th edn. London: Griffin, 1867. TE. R. Gerstein Library
• --. A Manual of Machinery and Millwork. London: Griffin, 1869. TEM Ran Gerstein Library
• --. Songs and Fables. Illus. by F.B. Glasgow: J. Maclehose, 1874. 11652.e.19 British Library; PR 5209 R3S6 Robarts Library
• --. Useful Rules and Tables Relating to Mensuration, Engineering, Structures, and Machines. London: Griffin, 1866. TE. R Gerstein Library

Stephen (Butler) Leacock was born in Swanmoor, Hampshire, on December 30, 1869, and came to Canada in 1876. He was educated at Upper Canada College, Strathroy Collegiate Institute, and the University of Toronto (B.A. 1891). He taught modern languages at Upper Canada College in Toronto from 1889 to 1899. Then he undertook graduate studies at the University of Chicago and obtained his PhD in 1903. He lectured at McGill University's Department of Economics and Political Science from 1903 to 1936, as chair of the department from 1908. In 1906 he published Elements of Political Science (Boston: Houghton; B-10 1058 Fisher Rare Book Library): it was successful and went into a new edition in 1921. He was known and loved, internationally, as a humorist. Literary Lapses: A Book of Sketches (1910), Nonsense Novels (1911), Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), and Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914) were just the first of his 40-odd popular books. In 1936, when he retired from McGill, he spoke out on the Great Depression, and the immense suffering it caused millions of Canadians, by publishing The Gathering Financial Crisis in Canada: A Survey of the Present Critical Situation and his only book of verse, on the same subject, Hellements of Hickonomics, in Hiccoughs of Verse Done in Our Social Planning Mill. The title of the second book plays with the title of his first book, the 1906 study on which his scholarly reputation was based. Politically, Leacock was a Conservative, but by 1936 he came to believe that the government should act in times of financial hardship to protect families. Leacock received many honours in his lifetime, including the Lorne Pierce Medal from the Royal Society of Canada and the Mark Twain Medal. He died of throat cancer on March 28, 1944. The Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour was established in his honour in 1947. See also Gerhard Richard Lomer's Stephen Leacock: A Check-list and Index of his Writings (Ottawa: National Library of Canada, 1954; Z 8494 .L6); Albert Frank and Teresa Moritz, Leacock: A Biography (Toronto: Stoddart, 1985; PS 8523 E2Z78); and Stephen Leacock: A Reappraisal (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1986; PS 8523 E2Z8 Robarts Library).

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 29, 1809, Oliver Wendell Holmes proceeded to Phillips Academy and Harvard, from which he graduated in 1829. His first, most popular poem, written at 21, was "Old Ironsides." Like most of Holmes' poems, this was an occasional piece, prompted by some incident. After his degree, he studied in Boston, Harvard, and Paris medical schools before graduating with a Harvard M.D. in 1835. He published Poems the next year. His career then turned to medical writing and teaching with his appointment as a professor of anatomy at Dartmouth College in 1838, and firmed up when he became Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, and Dean, at Harvard Medical School in 1847. Holmes kept up his old love of literature, serializing his The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table in the Atlantic Monthly and then bringing it out as a book in 1858. This included what Holmes reasonably believed to be his best poems, "The Chambered Nautilus" and "The Deacon's Masterpiece, or the Wonderful `One-Hoss-Shay.'" Composition never prevented Holmes from literary criticism. In 1853 he delivered a dozen lectures on the English poets at the Lovell Institute in Boston, and in 1872 the third of his "Breakfast-Table" books was published, The Poet at the Breakfast-Table. Besides issuing enlarged editions of his 1836 Poems, he published four subsequent volumes, Songs in Many Keys (1862), Songs of Many Seasons (1875), The Iron Gate, and Other Poems (1880), and Before the Curfew and Other Poems (1887). He wrote three novels that took advantage of his medical knowledge. His collected poems came out from Cambridge in 1895. Holmes died in Boston on October 7, 1894. His marriage to Amelia Lee Jackson in 1840 produced three children, one of whom (his namesake) became a justice of the Supreme Court. See also

• Currier, Thomas Franklin. A Bibliography of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Ed. Eleanor M. Tilton. New York: University Press, for the Bibliographical Society of America, 1953. Z 8414.3 .C8 Robarts Library.
• Eleanor M. Tilton, Amiable Autocrat: A Biography of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes (New York: Henry Schuman, 1947). PS 1981 T5 Robarts Library