James Pyle Wickersham Crawford

Background

James Pyle Wickersham Crawford was born on February 19, 1882 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the second son and youngest of four children of James and Corinne (Wickersham) Crawford. He was a descendant of Thomas Wickersham who settled in Chester County in 1701. His maternal grandfather, James Pyle Wickersham, was a noted educator. His father, a native of Baltimore, was a leader of the Reformed Church in the United States and a pastor for over thirty years in Philadelphia.

Education

Crawford's early education at Friends' Central School and Eastburn Academy prepared him for the University of Pennsylvania, from which he was graduated, A. B. , in 1902. There, under the guidance of the distinguished Lope de Vega scholar, Hugo Albert Rennert, he continued with graduate work for two years, then studied for two years more in Europe, mainly at the universities of Grenoble, Madrid, and Freiburg, and returned to take his Ph. D. at Pennsylvania in 1906. At the university he rose rapidly, becoming chairman of his department in 1912 and professor of Romanic languages in 1914. In 1925 he was awarded an honorary Litt. D. by Franklin and Marshall College.

Career

Crawford's reputation as a Hispanist rests principally on his studies of the Spanish drama. Following his important thesis, The Life and Works of Christóbal Su rez de Figueroa, he conducted a series of pioneer studies in the drama of the sixteenth century which resulted in many articles and in the standard reference work Spanish Drama Before Lope de Vega. Meanwhile he had published two other scholarly books, an edition of Francisco de la Cueva y Silva's Tragedia de Narciso (1909) and The Spanish Pastoral Drama (1915).

His interests, however, were broad, as is demonstrated by his published bibliography of more than a hundred items, ranging over Italian and French, as well as Spanish, literature from early times to Anatole France. In later years he was intensely interested in Spanish lyric poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In addition to his own research he created an important medium for publication of the research of others. After the demise of the Revue Hispanique he was the chief spirit in the founding of its American successor, the Hispanic Review, of which he was editor from its inception in 1933 until his death.

Crawford was an inspiring teacher, always interested in experimenting with ways to improve the teaching of Spanish. In addition to pedagogical articles, he edited the Macmillan Hispanic Series and wrote the notably successful Spanish Composition (1910), a First Book in Spanish (1918), and other textbooks. From 1922 to 1926 he edited with rare judgment the Modern Language Journal.

Overworked for years, in the summer of 1931 he taught at the University of California and on the return trip suffered a severe stroke. Only after a long and painful recovery was he able to resume his research and graduate teaching. Having spent the summer of 1939 in research at the British Museum, after the outbreak of hostilities he obtained passage on an overcrowded vessel and, though he had recently been very ill, was obliged to sleep on the ship's deck in a stormy sea. This experience and the anxiety he felt about the war seem to have brought on a second stroke, to which he succumbed in his Philadelphia home two days later.

Achievements

• He was assistant and acting director of the modern foreign language study conducted by American and Canadian committees on modern languages, whose reports profoundly affected language teaching. Among the honors that came to him were corresponding memberships in the Hispanic Society of America, the Real Academia Hispano-Americana de Ciencias y Artes, of Cadiz, the Academia de Bellas Artes, of Valladolid, and the Royal Spanish Academy, the latter a distinction that had been conferred on fewer than a dozen Americans.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Life and Works of Christóbal Suárez De Figueroa: A Dissertation (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Life and Works of Christóbal Suárez De F...)

  • A First Book in Spanish (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A First Book in Spanish Note that ch, 11, fl...)

  • Spanish Drama Before Lope de Vega

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Spanish Composition (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Spanish Composition I. Get up. Do not get u...)

  • The Spanish Pastoral Drama: 1915

    (Originally published in 1915. This volume from the Cornel...)

Personality

Crawford was a man of medium height and boyish figure. His most characteristic qualities were the gentleness, kindliness, and modesty that go with real inner strength and the humor that sparkled in his gray eyes. Endowed with phenomenal energy and a great zest for life, he loved his work, in the details of which he was supremely meticulous, and he loved play--the social life of Philadelphia and tennis, which he played fairly well. His abundant energy perhaps led him to accept too many responsibilities.

Connections

On June 3, 1909, he married Florence May Wickersham, a cousin. He was survived by his widow and their only child, Harriet de Benneville.

Father:

James Crawford

Mother:

Corinne (Wickersham) Crawford

Spouse:

Florence May Wickersham

Grandfather:

James Pyle Wickersham

educator

Son:

Harriet de Benneville