Mitzi Myers

Mitzi Ouida Myers (October 9, 1939 – November 5, 2001) was an American literary scholar. A 1990 Guggenheim Fellow, she specialized in children's literature and Georgian era women authors. She worked as a professor and lecturer at University of California, Santa Barbara and California State University, before settling at University of California, Los Angeles. Biography Early life and academic career Myers was born on October 9, 1939, in Sulphur Springs, Texas.

Originally an assistant professor at University of California, Santa Barbara from 1966 to 1973, Myers later started working at California State University in 1974. to research Edgeworth's work.

Personal life On March 14, 1967, Myers married Dennis Allen Hengeveld, a contemporary from Rice who later became an English professor at Cal State Fullerton. Her four Edgeworth manuscripts in progress at the time – two academic books and two novel annotated versions – were lost in the fire, as was the majority of her personal library of 35,000 volumes, reportedly including rare books and "nearly all of them annotated". Myers, whose sister Patsy told the Los Angeles Times that the books "were like children to her", repeatedly reentered the burning house in an attempt to save the books, suffering second- and third-degree burns and pneumonia as a result.

The Lion and the Unicorn called Myers "one of her generation's most far-ranging and rigorous scholars" in an obituary for her. She had a festschrift, Culturing the Child, 1690–1914, released in 2005 and edited by Donelle Ruwe.