Lee Piepho

Edward Lee Piepho, age 71, of Sweet Briar, Virginia passed away at home on December 18, 2013 after a four-year struggle with leiomyosarcoma, a rare cancer. We are grateful to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the Alan B. Pearson Regional Cancer Center in Lynchburg, and to Centra Hospice for their excellent care throughout his illness.

Lee was born on January 10, 1942 in Detroit, MI and grew up in Wilmette, IL. He was a graduate of New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, IL and graduated with an A.B. in English from Kenyon College in Gambier, OH. He received a M.A. in English from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia. His specialty was Renaissance English literature.

In 1969 Lee began teaching English at Sweet Briar College, where he remained throughout his long career. He was passionate about his subject and the humanities in general, loved teaching, and was a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award awarded by the Senior Class in 1991 and again in 2000. His teaching centered on Shakespeare, early modern culture, and film.

Lee was a consummate intellectual and an internationally recognized scholar in his specialty. Unusual for a scholar of English literature, his research broadly addressed the diffusion of Italian Renaissance Humanism in Great Britain and continental Europe, particularly in Neo-Latin literature (European works written in Latin in the early modern period). He published two books and numerous articles in this area and, even after retirement, continued to publish articles and present research papers at major international conferences. He spent many happy hours at the Folger Shakespeare Library in D.C. and at other major research libraries such as the Bodleian at Oxford, the Warburg Institute in London, and the library at Wolfenbüttel in Germany. Throughout his life Lee was a rare-book collector, adept at finding treasures overlooked by most. He has donated this collection to the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Susan Brand Piepho, his wife for nearly 50 years, his sister-in-law Jane Brand Jacobs of New York City, and his nephew, Alexander Byron Jacobs of Chicago, survive him. Susan and Lee met on a boat going to Europe the summer after their sophomore year in College and were married in 1964, a week after college graduation. Together they have enjoyed being Professors at Sweet Briar College, travelling all over the world, playing tennis and golf, and scuba diving.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Sweet Briar College Library for book acquisitions or to the Amherst County Humane Society.

A service, followed by a reception, will be held at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Clifford at 2 pm on Thursday, December 26. A memorial service will be held at Sweet Briar College at a later date.