Biography
Lawrence Willson was born in Lancaster, New Hampshire, on May 6, 1911. He received a bachelor's degree in English from Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1934 and earned a doctorate in English from Yale University in 1944. He taught at Delaware, Tennessee, Wesleyan, and Berkeley before coming to UCSB in 1947, where he was a professor of English, a Henry D. Thoreau scholar, and a longtime active member in the UCSB Phi Beta Kappa chapter. He retired in 1978 and died in Santa Barbara on January 28, 1996. A Lawrence Willson Memorial Lectureship was established later in 1996 and has been awarded to some of the most distinguished faculty at UCSB.
More information about Lawrence Willson's life is available in the UCSB Public Information Office Biographic Files and the Lawrence Willson oral history Down Country (OH 1), produced by David Russell for the UCSB Oral History Program.
From the guide to the Lawrence Willson Papers, ca. 1912-1995, (University of California, Santa Barbara. Library. Dept. of Special Collections)
