Harrison Hayford, 85; Professor, Top Expert on Herman Melville

Harrison Hayford, a retired Northwestern University professor of English who was considered the world’s most influential Melville scholar, died of complications of pneumonia Dec. 10 in Evanston, Ill. He was 85.

As general editor of the multivolume Northwestern-Newberry edition of “The Writings of Herman Melville,” Hayford assembled a team of editors in 1965 to begin the painstaking textual editing of the 19th century author’s published and unpublished works to produce editions that respect Melville’s original intentions.

Published by Northwestern University Press, it is considered the first to offer the total body of Melville’s writings in a critical text. The projected 15-volume edition’s final two installments--two volumes of Melville’s poems--are expected to be published within the next few years.

“It’s a monument to Harry’s lifelong dedication to Melville research on every level,” said Hershel Parker of Morro Bay, a former doctoral student of Hayford’s who became associate general editor of the Melville project.

Parker said Hayford’s enormous influence in the creation of a field of study about Melville came without his having written “an influential early book establishing him as an authority; he did it his way.”

“What was extraordinary is he got other people to do our best work that would go into the Northwestern-Newberry edition,” Parker said. “So he was able to inspire and harness the efforts of very diverse people.”

Born in 1916 in Belfast, Maine, Hayford earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from Tufts University in 1938 and 1940, and a doctorate from Yale University in 1945.

He intended to write his doctoral thesis on Ralph Waldo Emerson, but after failing to gain access to crucial papers he turned to Melville and wrote his dissertation on the relationship between Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Hayford was among eight students recruited by Yale English professor Stanley T. Williams, who initiated the first serious biographical work on all aspects of Melville’s life.

In 1962, Hayford and his colleague, the late Merton M. Sealts Jr., published an edition of Melville’s “Billy Budd,” which correctly established the text of the unfinished manuscript left among the author’s papers when he died in 1891. The novella was not published until 1924.

“No one before my father and his collaborator realized that Melville’s wife had gone over the manuscript,” said Charles Hayford, a visiting professor of history at Northwestern University.

Melville had notoriously poor handwriting. And in preparing “Billy Budd” for publication, Melville’s wife, Elizabeth, would write over an illegible word in the manuscript with what she thought was the correct word, Hayford said. “Sometimes she was right and sometimes she was wrong,” he said.

Parker said Harrison Hayford’s work on the 1962 “Billy Budd” edition was “a turning point in the serious textual study of Melville. It’s really a masterpiece of transcription.”

Before Hayford began working as general editor of the Northwestern-Newberry edition of “The Writings of Herman Melville,” he and Parker had begun work on the Norton Critical Edition of Melville’s most famous novel, “Moby-Dick.” Published in 1967, it became a standard text until it was replaced by the second edition in September.

The Norton Critical Edition of “Moby-Dick” is a student text that sells around 10,000 copies a year, Parker said. “What this means is Harry will be out there teaching for decades.”

Northwestern University Press also will publish Hayford’s collected essays on Melville next year.

Hayford’s wife, Josephine Wishart Hayford, a retired professor at Kendall College in Evanston, Ill., died in 1996.

In addition to Charles Hayford of Evanston, Hayford is survived by another son, Ralph Hayford of Toms River, N.J.; two daughters, Alison Hayford of Regina, Saskatchewan, and Deborah Weiss of Valparaiso, Ind.; and eight grandchildren.

The family has asked that any contributions in Hayford’s memory be made to the newly established Melville Archive and Cultural Center. Checks should be made to the Melville Society and sent in care of the Melville Society secretary, Department of English, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20052.