Kittredge Gives Last Lecture Today to English 22 Class in Harvard Hall

When, at 11 o'clock this morning, George Lyman Kittredge '82, Gurney professor of English Literature, "Kitty" to many Harvard generations, picks up his books and papers from the platform desk in Harvard 6, and, lecturing all the while to his English 22 class, walks slowly down the aisle, it will mark the end of an era in American scholarship.

With the Reading Period starting Monday, today will be Kitty's last appearance in class as an active member of the Faculty. His resignation, scheduled to take effect September 1, was announced in February.

Kittredge Legend

Last of that small group of luminaries which brought fame and honor to Harvard in the last half century, Kitty ranks as the foremost Shaksperian scholar in the world today.

Distinguished in appearance, impressive in speech, and Olympian in manner, he has awed class after class when he expounds the intricacies of Elizabethan interpretations, or the Anglo-Saxon of Beowulf. Today ends his forty-eighth year of classroom teaching, and in the fourth and succeeding centuries of Harvard's existence, today will be remembered for that reason alone.

Today then, as Kitty walks slowly down the aisle of his classroom, with his worn copy of "The Winter's Tale", defending Leontes from the charge of being a "bitter, jealous tyrant", the last of Harvard's great lights will be dimmed and Professor Kittredge will step into Harvard history.