Rosemond Tuve


Rosemond Teresa Marie Tuve was an American scholar of English literature, specializing in Renaissance literature—in particular, Edmund Spenser. She published four books on the subject along with several essays.
In her professional life, Rosemond Tuve worked as a professor of English at many elite institutions. She was a Fellow in the English Departments at Bryn Mawr College. She then went on to be an English Instructor at Goucher College, Vassar College and Connecticut College. Tuve moved from English Instructor to full professorship at Connecticut College where she stayed for twenty nine years. During her time as a professor at Connecticut College, Tuve spent several semesters as a visiting lecturer at other academic institutions. These institutions include the University of Minnesota and Harvard University. After Tuve left Connecticut College, she moved to a job as a lecturer at Princeton University, followed by a job as visiting professor and Senior Fellow of the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. Finally, Rosemond Tuve was an English Professor at the University of Pennsylvania until she died in 1964.

Biography

She was born November 29, 1903, in Canton, South Dakota, the daughter of Anthony G. Tuve, the president of Augustana College, and Ida Larsen Tuve, instructor of music there. One of her older brothers is Merle Tuve, a geophysicist.
She received her BA in 1924 from the University of Minnesota, and received a scholarship for graduate study at Bryn Mawr College, where she was awarded an MA, in 1923. Following further study at Somerville College, Oxford, England, she received a PhD from Bryn Mayr in 1931. After further study in England and France, she was appointed instructor of English at Connecticut College in 1934. She was promoted to assistant professor in 1936, associate professor in 1942, and full professor in 1947. She remained at Connecticut until 1962, when she was appointed professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, the first woman to be appointed to that position. After teaching there for three terms, she died of a stroke on December 20, 1964.

Publications

Her first published work, Seasons and Months: Studies in a Tradition of Middle English Poetry. was her PhD thesis, published in Paris by Libraire Universitarie in 1933. She subsequently published the following books:
A selection of her essays, was published as Essays: Spenser, Herbert, Milton, ed. by Thomas P Roche, Princeton Princeton University Press, 1970.

Education