Joseph and U.T. Summers papers

Joseph Summers, literary critic and Roswell S. Burroughs Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Rochester, was born in 1920 in Kentucky to a family of Southern Baptists. He earned his BA in English from Harvard University magna cum laude in 1941. After spending the majority of World War II in camps in New Hampshire and Virginia for Conscientious Objectors, he married U.T. Miller in 1943. After the war, he returned to Harvard for his Ph.D. in English, where he worked as a tutor in History and Literature, and during which time was deeply influenced by F.O. Matthiessen. Summers went on to teach at Bard College, the University of Connecticut at Storrs, Washington University in St. Louis, Michigan State University, and the University of Rochester. He spent nine months in Florence, Italy with a fellowship from the Fund for the Advancement of Learning, a year in Cambridge through the Guggenheim Foundation, a year as a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College and as a Fulbright Professor at Oxford, and a year as a visiting professor at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Summers is known for his work on seventeenth-century authors, in particular George Herbert and John Milton. His published works include George Herbert: His Religion and Art (1954), The Muse's Method: An Introduction to "Paradise Lost" (1962), The Heirs of Donne and Jonson (1970), Dreams of Love and Power: On Shakespeare's Plays (1984), Collected Essays on Renaissance Literature (1993), Andrew Marvell: Selected Poems (1963), and George Herbert: Selected Poetry (1967). He was also the editor of a twenty-five-volume series, Discussions of Literature (1960-1966).

U.T. Miller Summers was born in Austin, Texas on January 31, 1920, to parents John Brison Miller and Mary Elliott Miller. She spent her childhood between western Kentucky and McKenzie, Tennessee, where her mother attended the Cumberland Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Bethel College, beginning in 1931. In 1936, after struggling to make ends meet as a salesman, Summers' father left the family, with the departing note, "Hold tight, Sweetheart, I'll make good yet." U.T. went on to Vassar College with the encouragement of her mother and assistance of a Vassar graduate. After graduating, she spent a year at Radcliffe College, where she met her future husband Joseph Summers; they were married in 1943. She followed Joe through his many teaching positions at Bard College, the University of Connecticut at Storrs, Washington University in St. Louis, Michigan State University, and finally to the University of Rochester, in Rochester, New York. From 1969 to 1985, she was a professor of language and literature at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She retired as an Associate Professor after 16 years. She and Joe have two daughters, Mary and Hazel, and one son, Joseph Jr. U.T. continues to write about her childhood in Kentucky and Tennessee, and has authored one book, a memoir, titled Hold Tight, Sweetheart: A Memoir of the Twenties and the Great Depression (2007) after her father’s departure note from 1936.