Colin Robert Chase

Colin Robert Chase (February 5, 1935 – October 13, 1984) was an American academic. An associate professor of English at the University of Toronto, he was known for his contributions to the studies of Old English and Anglo-Latin literature. His best-known work, The Dating of Beowulf, challenged the accepted orthodoxy of the dating of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf—then thought to be from the latter half of the eighth century—and left behind what was described in A Beowulf Handbook as "a cautious and necessary incertitude".

Born in Denver, Chase was one of three sons of a newspaper executive and a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Mary Coyle Chase. Chase's two brothers became actors; he considered such a career, but ultimately studied English literature, classics, and philosophy. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, Master of Arts from Saint Louis and Johns Hopkins Universities, and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1971, the same year the university named him an assistant professor.

In addition to The Dating of Beowulf, Chase penned Two Alcuin Letter-Books—a scholarly collection of twenty-four letters by the eighth-century scholar Alcuin. He also wrote some eight articles and chapters, contributed to the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, and for nearly a decade writing the Beowulf section of "This Year's Work in Old English Studies" for the Old English Newsletter. Chase died of cancer in 1984, shortly before his anticipated promotion to full professor.

Early life and education Colin Robert Chase was born in Denver, Colorado, on February 5, 1935.