Deirdre bair

  • Deirdre Bair (June 21, – April 17, ) was an American literary scholar and biographer.
  • She was an unknown writer with no experience in biographies when she wrote to the elusive Samuel Beckett.
  • Deirdre Bair was an American literary scholar and biographer.

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    Deirdre Bair, English

    Deirdre Bair (C’57), former associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, died April 17 from a heart ailment. She was

    She was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in with a degree in English. She worked as a freelance writer for Newsweek magazine and The New Haven Register. She then went on to receive her master’s and PhD in comparative literature from Columbia University in and , respectively. 

    Dr. Bair was hired in by Penn as an assistant professor in the English department and was promoted to associate professor in While at Penn, she wrote her first book, a biography of the elusive Samuel Beckett. Beckett: A Biography () earned her an American Book Award (Almanac May 5, ), making her the first person from Penn to win the award. Her next project was a biography of Simone de Beauvoir. She won both a Guggenheim Fellowship and Rockefeller Aw

  • deirdre bair

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    Deirdre Bair

    American literary scholar and biographer (–)

    Deirdre Bair (June 21, – April 17, ) was an American literary scholar and biographer. She won a National Book Award for her biography of Samuel Beckett in [1]

    Early life and education

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    Bair was born Deirdre Bartolotta on June 21, in Pittsburgh.[1] She grew up in nearby Monongahela, Pennsylvania. Her father was a small-business owner, her mother a homemaker. She had one sister and one brother.[2]

    Bair earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania in She went on to earn her Master of Arts degree () and Doctor of Philosophy degree (), both in comparative literature, at Columbia University.[1][2] She worked as a stringer for Newsweek and a reporter for the New Haven Register before earning her doctorate.[1]

    Academic career

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    Starting in , Bair served as a professor of comparative literature at the University o

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    Remembering Deirdre Bair

    Books brought us tillsammans, which seems right. Working on a biography of Gloria Steinem, I met Mary Perot Nichols, who had also worked on a book about Steinem. Mary was a feisty former Village Voice columnist and city editor, a former head of WNYC Radio stations, a longtime ally of Edward Koch, and Deirdre’s best friend.

    At that point, Deirdre was finishing her biography of Anaïs Nin, but since I was using her Simone dem Beauvoir biography, I hesitantly asked if she would consider a blurb. When she provided a lovely one, my publisher called several times, carefully checking everything from which year Deirdre’s Samuel Beckett biography had received the National Book Award to the proper spelling of both Beckett and De Beauvoir. Then my cover appeared—with Deirdre’s name misspelled. inom was mortified. She laughed it off.

    I watched her immerse herself in the voluminous archives of Carl Jung. Wading imperturbably into a world populated bygd brilliant bu