Leonard Nathanson

Born on September 22, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, he received his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1954, won a scholarship to complete a certificate in Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in 1953, earned his M.A. in English at Duke University in 1955, and completed his Ph.D. in English and comparative literature in 1959.

Nathanson was a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin (1955-59), an instructor in English at Northwestern University (1959-60), and an assistant professor of English at the University of Cincinnati (1960-66) before joining the English faculty at Vanderbilt University as an associate professor in 1966. During his 32-year tenure at Vanderbilt, he offered a wide range of classes, including undergraduate and graduate courses in seventeenth-century British literature and John Milton.

He was an influential scholar in the field of Milton studies, mainly in his role as an associate editor of the nine-volume A Milton Encyclopedia (Bucknell University Press, 1978-83) and as a reading editor of the Journal of English and Germanic Philology. In addition to several articles on Milton, he was the author of one of the definitive studies of Sir Thomas Browne,The Strategy of Truth: A Study of Sir Thomas Brown (University of Chicago Press, 1967). He was also a patron of modern art.

Nathanson retired from Vanderbilt University as professor of English, emeritus, in June 1998.

He was a member of the American Association of University Professors, the Milton Society of America, and Phi Beta Kappa.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Morris and Lena Kelman Nathanson. He is survived by his older sister, Muriel Brown; his nieces, Claudia Carter and Beth Levine; his nephew, Andrew Brown; his great-nieces, Erin Carter, Ellen Levine, and Rachel Carter; and many former students and dear friends.