Peter Edgerly Firchow (December 16, 1937 – October 18, 2008) was an American literary scholar and educator. He wrote extensively on the relationship between British and

German literature German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy ...

of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he was a leading scholar of the British writer

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley ( ; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction novel, non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the ...

. He served as a faculty member in the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

English Department from 1967 to 2008 and as director of the university's

Comparative Literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

program from 1972 to 1978.

Life and career

Peter Firchow was born December 16, 1937, in Needham,

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

, United States, to a German father and

Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...

n mother. He eventually became fluent in English, Spanish, and German. In 1942, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Firchow's father was deported from the USA as a hostile alien, and the family followed him to Germany. The entire family returned to the USA in 1949 and settled in

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, where Firchow attended Cambridge Latin High School. Firchow received B.A. and M.A. degrees in

English literature English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian d ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

and a Ph.D. in English from the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

in 1965, writing his dissertation on Aldous Huxley. He wrote or edited nine books and translated three from German to English. He also wrote over 50 articles and over 70 reviews. Gerald Gillespie described two of Firchow's books as "great achievements in comparative literary studies": ''The Death of the German Cousin: Variations on a Literary Stereotype, 1890-1920'', and ''Strange Meetings: Anglo- German Literary Encounters from 1910 to 1950''. The latter was published just weeks before his death. Firchow's wife, Evelyn S. Firchow, also a professor at the University of Minnesota, was a philologist and scholar of medieval German literature. She edited a collection of Firchow's essays, ''Reluctant Modernists: Aldous Huxley and Some Contemporaries''. After his death Firchow was honored in a special edition of the ''Aldous Huxley Annual'', which included an evaluation of his criticism and announced the establishment of the "Peter Edgerly Firchow Memorial Essay Prize in Aldous Huxley Studies."Gillespie 2009
p. 2.

Selected bibliography

Books

* ''Friedrich Schlegel's "Lucinde" and the Fragments''. Ed. and Trans. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1971. * ''Aldous Huxley: Satirist and Novelist''. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1972. * ''The Writer's Place: Interviews on the Literary Situation in Contemporary Britain.'' Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1971 * ''East German Short Stories: An Introductory Anthology''. Ed. and Trans. with Evelyn S. Firchow. Boston: Twayne, 1979. * ''The End of Utopia: A Study of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World''. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1984. * ''The Death of the German Cousin: Variations on a Literary Stereotype, 1890-1920''. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1986. * ''Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"''. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1999. * ''The Abbey''. By Alois Brandstetter. Translated by Peter and Evelyn Firchow. Afterword by Peter Firchow. Riverside: Ariadne P, 1998. * ''W.H. Auden: Contexts for Poetry''. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2002. * ''Reluctant Modernists: Aldous Huxley and Some Contemporaries. A Collection of Essays''. Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2002. * ''Modern Utopian Fictions from H.G. Wells to Iris Murdoch''. Washington: Catholic U of America P, 2007. * ''Strange Meetings: Anglo-German Literary Encounters from 1910 to 1960''. Washington: Catholic U of America P, 2008.

Articles

* "Conrad, Goethe, and the German Grotesque." ''Comparative Literature Studies'' 13 (1976): 60-73. * "Mental Music: Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point as Novels of Ideas." ''Studies in the Novel'' 9 (1977): 518-35. * "Faschismus und die literarische Avantgarde in England zwischen den Kriegen." ''Faschismus und die Avantgarde''. Ed. by Reinhold Grimm and J. Hermand. Königstein: Athenäum, 1980. 35-65. * "Sunlight in the Hofgarten: The Wasteland and pre-1914 Munich." ''Anglia'' 111 (1993): 447-58. * "Shakespeare, Goethe, and the War of the Professors, 1914-1918." ''Intimate Enemies: English and German Literary Reactions to the Great War, 1914-1918''. Ed. Franz K. Stanzl and Martin Löschnigg. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1993. 177-86. * "Literary Multilingualism and Modernity: The Anglo-American Perspective." ''Multilinguale Literatur im 20. Jahrhundert.'' Ed. Manfred Schmeling and Monika Schmitz-Emans. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002. 59-67.

Notes

References

Star Tribune ''The Minnesota Star Tribune'', formerly the ''Minneapolis Star Tribune'', is an American daily newspaper based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As of 2023, it is Minnesota's largest newspaper and the List of newspapers in the United States, seventh- ...