The Irish Times, the New York Times and others published a news obituary for William M. Murphy, the Thomas Lamont Research Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature. Murphy died Friday, Sept. 26, 2008, at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady. He was 92.
A teacher who considered Gulliver’s Travels the greatest book ever written and a scholar who won prominence as biographer of the family of Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Murphy taught in Union’s English department from 1946 until his retirement in 1983.
In 1978 he published Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats, which the next year was one of five finalists for the National Book Award for a biography. He later published a companion book, Family Secrets: William Butler Yeats and His Relatives, which The New York Times described as one of the finest biographies of the Yeats family.
To read the obit in the Irish Times, click here (registration may be required).
To read the obit in the New York Times, click here (registration may be required).