Professional Summary
Lee Person is Nathaniel Ropes Professor of English. He is the author of Aesthetic Headaches: Women and a Masculine Poetics in Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne (Univ. of Georgia Press, 1988), Henry James and the Suspense of Masculinity (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), and The Cambridge Introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne (2007). He is the editor of the Norton Critical Editon of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings (2005, 2017) and A Historical Guide to James Fenimore Cooper (Oxford Univ. Press, 2007), and co-editor of The American Novel to 1870 (Ocford Univ. Press, 2014), Hawthorne and Melville: Writing a Relationship (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2008), and Roman Holidays: American Writers and Artists in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Univ. of Iowa Press, 2002). An affiliate faculty member in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, he teaches courses on 19th-century American literature, gender and sexuality, and literature and the environment.
Education
PhD: Indiana University 1977 (English)
M.A.: University of New Hampshire 1973 (English)
A.B.: Middlebury College 1969 (American Literature)
Abbreviated Publications
Book Chapter
Person, Leland S. "Hawthorne's Early Tales: Male Authorship, Domestic Violence, and Female Readers." Hawthorne and the Real: Bicentennial Essays. Ed. Millicent Bell. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2005. 125-143.
Person, Leland S. "Bibliographic Essay: Hawthorne and History." A Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Larry J. Reynolds. Oxford, England: Oxford UP, 2001. 183-209.
Person, Leland S. "Poe's Philosophy of Amalgamation: Reading Racism in the Tales." Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race, ed. J. Gerald Kennedy and Liliane Weissberg. Oxford, England: Oxford UP, 2001. 205-224.
Person, Leland S. "Jamesian Sadomasochism: The Invisible (Third) Hand of Manhood in The Golden Bowl." Questioning the Master: Gender and Sexuality in Henry James's Writing, ed. Peggy McCormack. Newark, DE: U of Delaware P, 2000. 149-175.
Person, Leland S. "Homo-Erotic Desire in the Tales of Writers and Artists." Henry James and Homo-erotic Desire. Ed. John R. Bradley. Basingstoke, England; New York: St. Martin's, 1999. 111-123.
Person, Leland S. "Hawthorne," American Literary Scholarship: An Annual, 1996 (Durham: Duke UP, 1998), 27-42.
Person, Leland S. "Hawthorne," American Literary Scholarship: An Annual, 1995 (Durham: Duke UP, 1997), 25-36.
Person, Leland S., "Hawthorne," American Literary Scholarship: An Annual, 1994 (Durham: Duke UP, 1996), 25-38.
Person, Leland S., "Hawthorne," American Literary Scholarship: An Annual, 1993 (Durham: Duke UP, 1995), 23-37.
Person, Leland S., "Hawthorne," American Literary Scholarship: An Annual, 1992 (Durham: Duke UP, 1994), 21-36.
Person, Leland S. “Transparent-Eyeballs: Water and Ecological Subjectivity in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction,” Words on Water: Literary and Cultural Representations, ed. Maureen Devine and Christa Grewe-Volpp (Trier, Germany: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2008), 147-58.
Person, Leland S. “Cooper’s Otsego: Land to Rove for a Man’s Life,” Reading Cooper, Teaching Cooper, ed. Jeffrey Walker (Stoughton, MA: AMS Press, 2007), 263-80.
Person, Leland S. “Gender and Sexuality,” A Companion to Herman Melville, ed. Wyn Kelley (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 231-46.
"Nathaniel Hawthorne," Prospects for the Study of American Literature (II). Ed. Richard Kopley and Barbara Cantalupo. New York: AMS Press, 2009. 26-49.
Person, Leland S. "Outing the Perverse: Poe's False Confessionals." The Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. J. Gerald Kennedy and Scott Peeples (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2019), 252-268.
“Hawthorne and the American Romance,” Nathaniel Hawthorne in Context, ed. Monika M. Elbert (New York: Cambridge UP, 2018), 240-251.
Other Publication
"The Scarlet Letter after 150 Years." Studies in American Fiction 29 (2001).
"The Hawthorne-Melville Relationship." A special Issue of ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 46 (2000).
"A for Affirmative Action?" American Literary History 9 (1997): 226-229.
"Hawthorne, Hester, and New Historical Determinism." Bulletin of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society of Japan 13 (1995): 9-10.
Peer Reviewed Publications
Person, Leland S. "'Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe': Race and Class Conflict in New England," Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 38.1 (Spring 2012): 1-18.
Person, Leland S. “The Ways of the Hour: Cooper’s Scarlet Letter,” Literature in the Early American Republic 1 (2009): 197-220.
Person, Leland S. "'A Man for the Whole Country': Marketing Masculinity in the Pierce Biography," Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 35.1 (Spring 2009): 1-22.
Person, Leland S. "Middlesex: What Men Like In Men." American Literary History 17 (2005): 753-764.
Person, Leland S. "Steinbeck's Queer Ecology: Sweet Comradeship in the Monterey Novels." Steinbeck Studies 15 (2004): 7-21.
Person, Leland S. “The Golden Film: Charlotte Stant and the Palace Guards,” Henry James Review 23 (Winter 2002): 25-37.
Person, Leland S. "The Dark Labyrinth of Mind: Hawthorne, Hester, and the Ironies of Racial Mothering." Studies in American Fiction 29 (2001): 33-48.
Goddu, Teresa, and Person, Leland S. "The Scarlet Letter After 150 Letters: A Special Issue." Studies in American Fiction 29 (2001).
Martin, Robert K., and Person, Leland S., eds. "The Hawthorne-Melville Relationship." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 46 (2000): 1-122.
Martin, Robert K., and Person, Leland S. "Missing Letters: Hawthorne, Melville, and Scholarly Desire." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 46 (2000): 99-122.
Person, Leland S. "Poe's Poetics of Desire: 'Th' expanding Eye to the Loved Object'." Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism 32 (1999): 1-7.
Person, Leland S. "The Historical Paradoxes of Manhood in Cooper's The Deerslayer." Novel: A Forum on Fiction 32 (1998): 76-98.
Person, Leland S. "The Last Temptation of Manhood: Sexual Transformations in Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder Series." Canadian Review of American Studies 28 (1998): 81-98.
Person, Leland S. "Reading Sexuality: The Object Lesson of James's Master." Arizona Quarterly 53 (1997): 23-37.
Person, Leland S. "Of Mice and Men: Steinbeck's Speculations in Manhood." Steinbeck Newsletter 8 (1995): 1-4.
Person, Leland S. "Melville's Cassock: Putting on Masculinity in Moby-Dick." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 40 (1994): 1-26.
Person, Leland S., "Trusting the Tellers: Paradoxes of Narrative Authority in Poe's 'A Descent Into the Maelstrom'." Journal of Narrative Technique 23 (1993): 46-56.
Person, Leland S. "James's Homo-Aesthetics: Deploying Desire in the Tales of Writers and Artists." Henry James Review 14 (1993): 188-203.
Person, Leland S. "Henry James, George Sand, and the Suspense of Masculinity." PMLA 106 (1991): 515-528.
Person, Leland S., "Hawthorne's Bliss of Paternity: Sophia's Absence from 'The Old Manse'." Studies in the Novel 23 (1991): 46-59.
Person, Leland S. "The Aboriginal Hawthorne: Mastering the Master from Beyond the Grave." Henry James Review 12 (1991): 162-166.
Person, Leland S. "Inscribing Paternity: Nathaniel Hawthorne as a Nineteenth-Century Father." Studies in the American Renaissance (1991): 225-244.
Person, Leland S. "Poe's Composition of Philosophy: Reading and Writing 'The Raven'." Arizona Quarterly 46 (1990): 1-15.
Person, Leland S. "Cooper's Queen of the Woods: Judith Hutter in The Deerslayer." Studies in the Novel 21 (1989): 253-67.
Person, Leland S. "Hester's Revenge: The Power of Silence in The Scarlet Letter." Nineteenth-Century Literature 43 (1989): 465-483.
Person, Leland S. "Mardi and the Reviewers: The Irony of (Mis)Reading." Melville Society Extracts 72 (1988): 3-5.
Person, Leland S. "Strether's 'Penal Form': The Pleasure of Imaginative Surrender." Papers on Language and Literature 23 (1987): 27-40.
Person, Leland S. "Hawthorne's Love Letters: Writing and Relationship." American Literature 59 (1987): 211-227.
Person, Leland S. "Fitzgerald's 'O Russet Witch!': Dangerous Women, Dangerous Art." Studies in Short Fiction 23 (1986): 443-448.
Person, Leland S. "Eroticism and Creativity in The Aspern Papers." Literature and Psychology 32 (1986): 20-31.
Person, Leland S. "The American Eve: Miscegenation and a Feminist Frontier Fiction." American Quarterly 37 (1985): 668-685.
Person, Leland S. "Home As Found and The Leatherstocking Series." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 27 (1981): 170-180.
Person, Leland S. "'My Good Mamma': Women in Edgar Huntly and Arthur Mervyn." Studies in American Fiction 9 (1981): 33-46.
Person, Leland S. "James Kirke Paulding: Myth And The Middle Ground." Western American Literature 16 (1981): 39-54.
Person, Leland S. "Playing House: Jane Austen's Fabulous Space." Philological Quarterly 59 (1980): 62-75.
Person, Leland S. "The Scarlet Letter And The Myth Of The Divine Child." American Transcendental Quarterly 44 (1979): 295-309.
Person, Leland S. "Cooper's The Pioneers and Leatherstocking's Historical Function." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 25 (1979): 1-10.
Person, Leland S. "'Herstory' and Daisy Buchanan." American Literature 50 (1978): 250-257.
Person, Leland. "Aesthetic Headaches and European Women In The Marble Faun and The American." Studies in American Fiction 4 (1976): 65-79.
Person, Leland S. “Queer Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart of His Fiction,” Poe Studies 41 (2008): 7-30.
“Sophia Hawthorne, Henry James, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘curious aversion’ to Nudity in Art,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 41.2 (Autumn 2015): 1-25.
Book
Person, Leland S. Henry James and the Suspense of Masculinity. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
Person, Leland S., Aesthetic Headaches: Women and a Masculine Poetics in Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1988.
Person, Leland S. The Cambridge Introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007.
Person, Leland S., and Jana L. Argersinger. Hawthorne and Melville: Writing a Relationship. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 2008.
Person, Leland S. A Historical Guide to James Fenimore Cooper. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007.
Person, Leland S. The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.
Person, Leland S., and Robert K. Martin. Roman Holidays: American Writers and Artists in Nineteenth-Century Italy. Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 2002.
Review
The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1872-1876. Vol. 1. Ed. Pierre A. Walker and Greg W. Zacharias (U of Nebraska P, 2008), Resources for American Literary Study 34 (May 2011): 272-75.
Hester: The Missing Years of The Scarlet Letter by Paula Reed (St. Martin's, 2010), Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 37.1 (Spring 2011): 159-65.
"Hawthorne and His Culture: Three Recent Views," Studies in the Novel 24 (1992): 434-441.
The Threads of The Scarlet Letter: A Study of Hawthorne’s Transformative Art by Richard Kopley, Nathaniel Hawthorne Review (2005): 56-59.
The Other Henry James by John Carlos Rowe. College Literature (2000): 169-71.
The Rhetorical Logic of Henry James by Sheila Teahan, English Literature in Transition (2000): 496-99.
Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses: The Political Economy of Literature in Antebellum America, by Terence Whalen, Edgar Allan Poe Review (2000): 24-27.
Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, vol. 23 of the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne Review (1998): 12-19.
The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr., by Alfred Habegger, Henry James Review (1998): 94-97.
The Social Self: Hawthorne, Howells, William James, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology, by Joseph Alkana. South Atlantic Review 62.4 (1997): 94-96.
Closet Writing/Gay Reading: The Case of Melville's Pierre, by James Creech, South Central Review 13 (Winter1996): 54-55.
A Companion to Henry James Studies, ed. Daniel Mark Fogel (Greenwood, 1993), Resources for American Literary Study 22 (1996): 273-75.
Henry James and Masculinity: The Man at the Margins, by Kelly Cannon (St. Martin's, 1994), Henry James Review 15 (1994): 224-26.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Study of the Short Fiction, by Nancy Bunge (Twayne, 1993), Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 20.2 (1994): 39-40.
The Style of Hawthorne's Gaze: Regarding Subjectivity, by John Dolis (U of Alabama P, 1993), American Literature 66 (1994): 377-378.
Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Edwin Haviland Miller (U of Iowa P, 1991), New England Quarterly 65 (1992): 654-656.
Removals: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Politics of Indian Affairs, by Lucy Maddox (Oxford UP, 1991), CLIO 22 (1992): 94-97.
Patrons and Protégeés: Gender, Friendship, and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Shirley Marchalonis (Rutgers UP, 1988), Resources for American Literary Study 18 (1992): 213-16.
Emerson's Rhetoric of Revelation: "Nature," the Reader, and the Apocalypse Within, by Alan D. Hodder (Pennsylvania State UP, 1990), Journal of the American Academy of Religion 60 (1992): 786-88.
The French Side of Henry James, by Edwin Sill Fussell (Columbia UP, 1990), CLIO 21 (1992): 209.
On Hawthorne: The Best from American Literature, ed. Edwin H. Cady and Louis J. Budd (Duke UP, 1990, South Atlantic Review 63 (1991): 119-21.
Secrets and Sympathy: Forms of Disclosure in Hawthorne's Novels, by Gordon Hutner (U of Georgia P, 1988), Journal of English and Germanic Philology 89 (1990): 441-43.
Realism and Romance: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and American Fiction, by Elissa Greenwald (UMI Research P, 1989), American Literature 61 (1989): 692-93.
Hoosier Folk Legends, by Ronald H. Baker (Indiana UP, 1982), Western Folklore 42 (1983): 314-15.
Devils and Rebels: The Making of Hawthorne’s Damned Politics, by Larry J. Reynolds (University of Michigan Press, 2008), Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 35. 2 (Fall 2009): 138-44.
Keywords
Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Gender and Men's Studies