Ulrich C. Knoepflmacher

Ulrich Camillus Knoepflmacher (born June 26, 1931) is a German-born, American literary scholar. He is the William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature, emeritus, and Professor of English, emeritus, Princeton University where he taught from 1979 to 2006. A specialist in Victorian literature and in childhood studies, he has been recognized for his influential role in helping to establish children's literature as a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry. He is a member of the Modern Language Association and The Kipling Society. His work spans Romantic and Victorian poetry, the English novel, and British and American children's books.

Biography

Knoepflmacher was born in Munich, Germany to Austrian-Jewish parents, Georg Knoepflmacher and Hilde Weiss. The family left Munich for Vienna in 1933 following the rise of Nazism, and emigrated from Europe in 1939, traveling through the Netherlands and Belgium before sailing from Antwerp to South America aboard the S.S. Aconcagua.

They settled in Oruro, Bolivia, where Knoepflmacher was educated at the Anglo-American School. In 1950, he moved to the United States and in 1951 enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. After initially earning a B.A. in architecture, he changed his focus to English literature for his M.A. there, eventually earning his Ph.D. in English at Princeton University. He obtained United States Citizenship in 1963.

Academic career

Knoepflmacher began his teaching career at the University of California, Berkeley, before joining the faculty of the English Department at Princeton University in 1979 where later he was named the William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature. He instructed teachers at the Bread Loaf School of English, Vermont (1981–1987) and through the New Jersey Teachers as Scholars program at Princeton. Over his distinguished career Knoepflmacher served on the editorial boards of the University of California Press and of scholarly journals: PMLA, Nineteenth-Century Literature; S.E.L.: Studies in English Literature; Victorian Literature and Culture.

Legacy

Knoepflmacher is widely credited for his scholarship on the Victorian period and with transforming the academic study of children's literature. His interdisciplinary approach combined close literary analysis with historical, biographical, and cultural frameworks. He is also known for his mentorship of emerging scholars and for encouraging formal literary analysis to genres previously marginalized in literary studies, such as fairy tales and fantasy literature.

Awards and honors

American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship (1965) Humanities Research Fellowships, University of California, Berkeley (1966–67; 1977) Guggenheim Fellowships (1969, 1983) NEH Fellowships and Seminar Grants (1972, 1975, 1983, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1994, and 1998) National Humanities Center Fellowship (1995) Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities, Princeton University (2007)

Selected publications

Books: Religious Humanism and the Victorian Novel. Princeton University Press, 1965; reprint ed. 2015. George Eliot's Early Novels: The Limits of Realism. University of California Press, 1968; reprint ed. 2019. Laughter and Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Era. University of California Press, 1971. 'Wuthering Heights': A Study. Ohio University Press, 1994. Ventures into Childland: Victorians, Fairy Tales, and Femininity. University of Chicago Press, 1998. Victorians Reading the Romantics: Essays by U.C. Knoepflmacher. Edited by Linda M. Shires. Ohio State University Press, 2016.

Co-Edited Essay Volumes: With G. B. Tennyson, Nature and the Victorian Imagination. University of California Press, 1977. With George Levine, The Endurance of 'Frankenstein': Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel. University of California Press, 1982. With Nina Auerbach, Forbidden Journeys: Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Victorian Women Writers. University of Chicago Press, 1992. With Logan D. Browning, Victorian Hybridities: Cultural Anxiety and Formal Innovation. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

Edited Editions: George MacDonald, The Complete Fairy Tales. Ed. U.C. Knoepflmacher. Penguin, 1999. Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess. Ed. U.C. Knoepflmacher. Penguin, 2002.