Bronson, Walter C.

Walter Cochrane Bronson (1862-1928), professor of English and author of The History of Brown University, 1764-1914, was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, on August 17, 1862. His mother was the daughter of Jeremiah Chaplin 1799, the first president of Waterville (Colby) College. He postponed entering college because of illness and graduated from Brown in 1887. He studied at Harvard Divinity School the next year and did graduate work at Cornell from 1888 to 1890. He was appointed Fellow in English Literature at Cornell in 1889 and professor of English at DePauw University in 1890. He became associate professor of English literature at Brown in 1892, and full professor in 1895. The Dictionary of American Biography said of him: “His creative tendencies were restrained ... by an acute critical sense, a liking for research, and his genius for teaching. He held it finer to teach great literature than to produce a middling sort.” He edited Poems of William Collins and volumes of English and American poetry and prose, and was the author of A Short History of American Literature in 1900, and The History of Brown University, 1764-1914, written in the sesquicentennial year of the University. Bronson retired in 1927 and traveled to the south of France for his health. He died in Oxford, England, on June 2, 1928.