Leitz, Robert C., III 1944–

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Leitz, Robert C., III 1944–

PERSONAL:

Born October 28, 1944, in New Orleans, LA; son of Robert Charles, Jr. and Mildred (a homemaker) Leitz; married Ann Marie Vicknair (a nurse), May 25, 1968. Ethnicity: "Anglo-Saxon; Caucasian." Education: Attended Louisiana State University, 1962-63; University of New Orleans, B.A., 1967; Texas A&M University, M.A., 1969, Ph.D., 1973. Politics: Republican. Religion: United Church of Christ. Hobbies and other interests: Photography, golf.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Shreveport, LA. Office—Noel Memorial Library, Louisiana State University at Shreveport, Shreveport, LA 71115; fax: 318-797-5156. E-mail—robert.leitz@lsus.edu.

CAREER:

Louisiana State University at Shreveport, Shreveport, assistant professor, 1973-77, associate professor, 1977-82, professor of English, 1982—, Ruth Herring Noel Distinguished Professor, 2000—, holder of Ruth Herring Noel Endowed Chair, 2005—, curator of James Smith Noel Collection, 1994—, also American studies fellow, 1986. Texas A&M University, visiting professor, 1986. Derringdew Silky Terriers, kennel owner.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association of America, American Association of University Professors (local chapter president, 1975-76), College English Association, Society for Textual Scholarship, Association for Documentary Editing (member of executive council, 1987-89), South Central Modern Language Association (campus representative, 1974-75; chair of bibliography and textual criticism, 1984-86), Frank Norris Society (president of board of directors, 1985—), Jack London Society (member of board of directors, 1989—), Phi Kappa Phi (president of local chapter, 1989-90), American Kennel Club, Silky Terrier Club of America (member of board of directors, 1989-91), Shreveport Kennel Club (member of board of directors, 1989-91).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grants from Indiana University Foundation, 1975 and 1977, and American Philosophical Society, 1975, 1978, and 1990; Henry E. Huntington research fellow, Huntington Library, 1978 and 1979; grants from Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 1980, and National Endowment for the Humanities, 1980-81 and 1986; distinguished faculty fellow, Louisiana State University Foundation 1983-84.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Selected Letters of W.D. Howells, Volume 3, Twayne (Woodbridge, CT), 1980.

(Editor, with Earle Labor and I. Milo Shepard) The Letters of Jack London, Volume 1: 1896-1905, Volume 2: 1906-1912, Volume 3: 1913-1916, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1988.

(Editor, with Earle Labor and I. Milo Shepard) The Short Stories of Jack London: The Authorized Edition with Definitive Texts, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor, with Earle Labor) Jack London, The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Dog Stories, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor, with Kenneth M. Price) Critical Essays on George Santayana, G.K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1991.

(Editor, with Earle Labor and I. Milo Shepard) The Complete Short Stories of Jack London, three volumes, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1993.

(Editor, with Joseph R. McElrath, Jr.) "To Be an Author!" The Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1889-1905, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1997.

(Editor, with Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., and Jesse S. Crisler) Charles W. Chesnutt: Essays and Speeches, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1999.

(Editor, with Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., and Jesse S. Crisler) An Exemplary Citizen: Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1906-1932, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 2002.

(Editor, with Kevin L. Cope) Imagining the Sciences: Expressions of the New Science in the "Long" Eighteenth Century, AMS Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to The Encyclopedia of American Literature. Contributor to professional journals, including Dalhousie Review, American Literature, Jack London Newsletter, American Notes and Queries, College English Association Critic, Resources for American Literary Study, American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, Studies in American Fiction, and Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. Associate editor of American literature, South Central Review, 1985-87; coeditor, Frank Norris Studies, 1986—; general editor (with Kevin L. Cope), ECCB: Eighteenth Century, a Current Bibliography, 1994—.

SIDELIGHTS:

In compiling the three volumes of The Letters of Jack London, Robert C. Leitz III, Earle Labor, and I. Milo Shepard selected and annotated 1,500 of the more than 4,000 extant letters that American fiction writer Jack London produced in his short but eventful life. The early correspondence collected here conveys an adventurous young London who, by the age of twenty, shipped out as a seaman to Japan, joined the first Klondike gold rush, marched on Washington, DC, with the unemployed, and served time in jail for vagrancy. In 1900, at the age of twenty-four, he translated his exploits into fiction, producing a collection of short stories based on his experiences in the Klondike. The novels that followed, including The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, and Martin Eden, are also based on his own adventures on land and at sea. London soon became one of America's most popular writers and would go on to publish fifty books. E.L. Doctorow, contributing to the New York Times Book Review, commented that "it was Jack London's capacity for really living in the world, for taking it on in self-conscious and often reckless acts of courage, that made him our first writer-hero."

In the years before his death at age forty due to alcohol and drug addiction and other abuse to his body, London's letter-writing became increasingly hostile and self-justifying. According to Times Literary Supplement contributor Peter Kemp in his review of the collected correspondence, London "regularly turns letters into assault and battery by post." His later letters reportedly reveal racism, brutality, and an obsession with money to a degree that bordered on the pathological. In this apparent period of belligerence as in his heroic youth, London's powerful character is represented in Leitz, Labor, and Shepard's comprehensive collection of his letters. "Here," Donald Pizer observed in his Washington Post Book World review, "in these three handsomely produced and superbly edited volumes, is Jack London in full, warts and all, and in all his richness and complexity."