Hyder Edward Rollins

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Hyder Edward Rollins (November 8, 1889 – July 25, 1958) was an American scholar and English professor who became a leading expert on Elizabethan poetry, broadside ballads, and Romantic poets. He is best known for his work on John Keats, including editing the important two-volume edition of Keats’s letters.

Rollins was born in Abilene, Texas, to Nathaniel G. and Elva Rollins. He started college at Southwestern University at age 14, later working as a teacher in rural schools to support himself. He earned a BA in 1910, an MA from the University of Texas in 1912, and taught there for two years. He did graduate work at Johns Hopkins and then Harvard, earning his PhD in 1917. When World War I began, he declined a Harvard traveling fellowship to join the U.S. Army Signal Corps and served in France as a second lieutenant. In 1919 he returned to Europe on a fellowship he had previously declined.

Rollins began his teaching career at New York University in 1920 and became a full professor in four years. He returned to Harvard in 1926 and, in 1939, became the Gurney Professor of English after succeeding George Lyman Kittredge. He supervised more than 100 doctoral dissertations during his Harvard years and retired in 1956, staying in Cambridge.

In his last years he focused on the text and order of Keats’s letters. Even with failing eyesight and health, he finished proofreading galleys just weeks before he died. He never married and is buried in Abilene.