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Eric Nye

College positions:
Fellow Commoner
Subject:
Intellectual History and English Literature
Department/institution:
Department of English, University of Wyoming (retired)
Contact details:
ewn10@cam.ac.uk

Professor Eric Nye

An Emeritus Professor, Eric has relocated to Cambridge where he continues his research on the early Cambridge Apostles, especially John Sterling (1806-1844) whose life and letters he will publish.

During his PhD work on Coleridge at the University of Chicago, a Rotary Foundation Scholarship brought him first to Queen’ College, and he studied with George Steiner, then at Churchill. As a young assistant professor at Wyoming, he spent a term as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. Later, in 2012-13, he became a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall at the same time as Queens’ appointed him a Distinguished Academic Visitor. Since his retirement he has been elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

He was Founder and Director of the University of Wyoming English Honors Program and currently sits on the Government Affairs Committee of the National Telephone Cooperative Association, through his role as the President of Plainview Telephone Company/Nyecom (US). He served for over a decade on the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, State Advisory Committee for Wyoming, and was Chair of the Board, Wyoming Center for the Book, a state-based affiliate of the Library of Congress. Since 2002 he has been the Hon Treasurer for North America for the Bibliographical Society in London.

Eric is married to Carol D. Frost, Emerita Professor of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Wyoming and herself a Life Member of Clare Hall.

Select publications

  • John Kemble’s Gibraltar Journal: The Spanish Expedition of the Cambridge Apostles, 1830-1831 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
  • “Absent Signifiers in Jane Austen: Toward an Archaeology of Morals.” Eighteenth-Century Life 35.3 (Fall 2011), pp. 81-88.
  • “John Sterling,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Colin Matthew & Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004) 52:518-21.
  • “Effingham Wilson, the Radical Publisher of the Royal Exchange.” Publishing History 36 (1994): 87-102.
  • “Coleridge and the Publishers: Twelve New Manuscripts.” Modern Philology 87.1 (Aug. 1989): 51-72.
  • “Big Game on the Editor’s Desk: Roosevelt and Bierstadt’s Tale of the Hunt.” New England Quarterly 60.3 (Sept. 1987): 454-65.
  • “Coleridge and the Berkshire Chronicle: A New Manuscript Letter and ‘A Tale of Horror’.” Philological Quarterly 64.4 (Fall 1985): 584-92.
  • “Coleridge to Joseph Hughes: A Newly Identified Letter.” The Library (London), 6th ser., 6 (Dec. 1984): 376-80.

Select awards and memberships

  • Fellow, Society of Antiquaries (London, elected 2019)
  • The Hawks Club (Cambridge, elected 2018)
  • Elected to Senate of the Phi Beta Kappa Society (US), 2015-21, re-elected 2021-2027
  • The Grolier Club (New York, elected 2007)
  • The Cambridge Bibliographical Society
  • Modern Language Association (Life Member, elected Delegate Assembly, 1990-93)
  • Association for Literary Scholars and Critics (Life)
  • Jane Austen Society of North America (Life), Jane Austen Society (UK)
  • Friends of Coleridge (UK, Life)
  • Charles Lamb Society (UK)
  • Carlyle Society (UK, Life)
  • The Tennyson Society (UK, Life)
  • Cambridge Union Society (UK, Life)
  • General Society of Mayflower Descendants (Life)

Further links