Robert Fitzgerald

Robert Stuart Fitzgerald (12 October 1910 – 16 January 1985) was a poet, critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students."^[1] He was best known as a translator of ancient Greek and Latin. In addition, he also composed several books of his own poetry.

Biography

Fitzgerald grew up in Springfield, Illinois and, when he was 18, attended The Choate School for a year before entering Harvard University in 1929. In 1931, while he was still a college student, a group of his poems were published in Poetry magazine. After his college graduation in 1933, he became a reporter for The New York Herald Tribune for a year. Later he worked several years for TIME magazine.^[1]

In World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy in Guam and Pearl Harbor. Later he was an instructor at Sarah Lawrence and Princeton University, poetry editor of The New Republic. He succeeded Archibald MacLeish as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory Emeritus at Harvard in 1965 and served until his retirement in 1981.^[1]

He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. From 1984 to 1985 he was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now known as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, the United States' equivalent of a national poet laureate. In 1984 Fitzgerald received a L.H.D. from Bates College.^[2]

Fitzgerald is widely known as one of the most poetic translators into the English language. He also served as literary executor to Flannery O'Connor, who was a boarder at his home in Redding, Connecticut, from 1949 to 1951. Fitzgerald's wife at the time, Sally Fitzgerald, compiled O'Connor's essays and letters after O'Connor's death. Benedict Fitzgerald is the son of Robert and Sally.^[3]

Fitzgerald was married three times. He later moved to Hamden, Connecticut, where he died at his home after a long illness.^[1]

Bibliography

Translations

• Euripides (1936). The Alcestis of Euripides. Translators Dudley Fitts, Robert Fitzgerald. Harcourt, Brace and company. 
• Sophocles (1951). Oedipus Rex. Translators Dudley Fitts, Robert Fitzgerald. Faber and Faber. 
• Sophocles (1954). Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone. Translators David Grene, Robert Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Wyckoff. University of Chicago press. 
• Homer's The Odyssey. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1961. 
  • Homer (1998). The Odyssey. Translator Robert Fitzgerald. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374224387. 
• Homer (1998). The Iliad. Translator Robert Fitzgerald. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192834058. http://books.google.com/books?id=OT9pj8chUbQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Robert+Fitzgerald. 
• Virgil (2008). The Aeneid. Translator Robert Fitzgerald. ReadHowYouWant.com. ISBN 9781427038258. http://books.google.com/books?id=yzH69isCU1QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Robert+Fitzgerald.  (1983)

Poems

• Poems. Arrow Editions. 1935. 
• A Wreath for the Sea. Arrow editions. 1943. 
• In the Rose of Time: Poems, 1939-1956. W W Norton & Co Inc. 1956. ISBN 9780811202794. 
• Spring Shade: Poems, 1931-1970. New Directions. 1971. ISBN 9780811200523. http://books.google.com/books?id=LRklaJVc_4cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Robert+Fitzgerald&lr=. 

Editor

• Robert Fitzgerald, ed (1969). The Collected Poems of James Agee. Calder and Boyars. ISBN 9780714508870. 
• James Agee (1976). Robert Fitzgerald. ed. The Collected Short Prose of James Agee. Cherokee Publishing Company. ISBN 9780877973027. 
• Flannery O'Connor (1969). Sally Fitzgerald, Robert Fitzgerald. ed. Mystery and manners: occasional prose. Macmillan. ISBN 9780374508043. http://books.google.com/books?id=FL8O0mTosVUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Robert+Fitzgerald. 
• Flannery O'Connor (1965). Sally Fitzgerald, Robert Fitzgerald. ed. Everything that rises must converge. Macmillan. ISBN 9780374504649. http://books.google.com/books?id=-Sd3OkSndXQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Robert+Fitzgerald. 

References

External links

• Interview from The Poet's Other Voice
• Robert Fitzgerald biography and example of poetry. Part of a series of poets.