Academic and Professional Life
Phelps was very athletic and played what was then the new game of baseball as well as golf and lawn tennis. He studied novelists like Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev. During his first year at Yale he offered a course in modern novels. This brought the university considerable attention nationally and internationally which upset his tenured peers at Yale. He agreed to give up the course for a while to avoid the media attention. Responding to popular demand by his students, and to avoid scrutiny, he taught the same course outside the official curriculum. Once the unfavorable attention died down, he was appointed Lampson Professor of English Literature in 1901.
Phelps' courses became the most popular and well attended on campus. He had an engaging speaking style and was personally involved with what he taught. He wrote about English and European literature. During trips to Europe he met many of the leading writers of the turn of the 19th century.
Phelps taught at Yale for 41 years before retiring in 1933. From 1941 to 1943 he was the director of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.
Read more about this topic: William Lyon Phelps
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