Walter Houghton
Week of July 17, 2000

Dr. Walter Edwards Houghton, the only man to receive an honorary degree from Wellesley College, is the Wellesley Person of the Week.

This leader among Victorian scholars, whose work brought international recognition to Wellesley College, was born in Stamford, CT, on September 21, 1904. Houghton graduated from The Hotchkiss School, a boarding school in the foothills of the Connecticut Berkshires, in 1920. He then enrolled at Yale, where he earned Ph.B., M.A. and Ph.D degrees, the last of which was granted to him in 1931. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was elected to the Skull and Bones.

He held teaching positions at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, and at The Hill School, in Pottstown, PA. He then joined the Harvard faculty teaching literature and history. Following 11 years of teaching at Harvard, Houghton became a member of the faculty at Wellesley College in 1942.

At Wellesley, Houghton held the Sophie C.Hart Professorship of English. As a teacher, he exuded his fascination with Victorian ideas, attitudes and values. His first book, "The Art of Newman's 'Apologia", was a scholarly examination of John Henry Cardinal Newman's "Apologia pro Vita Sua". Jane Carman '46, closed her review of the book by noting, "The reader cannot close the book without a sense of having been absorbed in an exciting literary exploration."

The undertaking for which Houghton is best known was The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900 (University of Toronto Press). With his wife, Associate Editor Esther Lowrey Rhoads Houghton, he developed "The Index" as a system for the identification of authors, and the location of articles, originally published in 19th century British periodicals, covering topics including literature, religion, politics, social science, political economy, women's writing, archaeology, science and the arts.

Houghton won the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award for his book "The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830 - 1870" (Yale University Press, 1963). Among his other written works were "The Poetry of Clough: An Essay in Revaluation" (1963), "The Formation of Thomas Fuller's 'Holy and Profane States" (1938), "Victorian Poetry and Poetics" (co-authored with G.R. Stange) and many literary journal articles. He was named a Sterling Fellow of Yale University in 1931, a Ford Fellow in 1954 and a Guggenheim Fellow in 1966. He served as President of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals.

Professor Houghton retired from Wellesley College in 1969 after a tenure of 27 years. He continued his work on "The Index" and was working on a book that examined the writing of Matthew Arnold. As part of Wellesley College's 100th Anniversary celebration, Houghton was awarded the Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree in 1976.

Walter Houghton, who resided in Wellesley and on Martha's Vineyard, died on April 11, 1983, of pneumonia.

Written by Mur Wolf