Philbrick, Charles H.

Charles Horace Philbrick (1922-1971), professor of English, was born in Providence on December 12, 1922. He entered Brown in 1940, but his education was interrupted by service with the U.S. 8th Air Force stationed in England. He finished his course work at Brown in the summer of 1946, and became an assistant in the English Department in the fall, before his formal graduation in 1947. He was instructor in 1947-48 and earned his master’s degree that year. He spent a year at graduate school at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. degree at Brown in 1953, having been instructor in English again since 1949. He was appointed assistant professor in 1953, associate professor in 1959, and professor in 1967. He was chairman of the committee that set up the Afro-American Studies Program at Brown. He won recognition when his poem, New England Suite, won the Wallace Stevens National Poetry contest in 1962. He published two other books of poetry, Wonderstrand Revisited in 1960, and Voyages Down in 1967, and a novel, Westaway, in 1968. He died on April 4, 1971 in Providence.