The English Professor

Across the span of more than forty years Raphael Dorman O'Leary a professor of English rhetoric and English literature taught his students at the University of Kansas to think straight to put sinew into their sentences and to embrace the magnificent literary treasures of their mother tongue. <em>The English Professor</em> by authors Margaret R. O'Leary and Dennis S. O'Leary offers a narrative of the life work and times of a revered Midwestern university English teacher. <p>This memoir narrates how the professor born in 1866 was raised on a Kansas farm in the post-bellum era. Like his father before him he was committed to a life of learning and teaching. His colleagues knew him for his unpretentious exterior honesty and integrity and his flashing anger at cheapness vulgarity pretense and above all charlatanism. When Professor O'Leary died after a short illness in 1936 his personal effects passed through two generations to his grandson Dennis S. O'Leary who with his wife Margaret discovered his papers while restoring a family house. The trove of material served as the core resource for the compilation of The English Professor. It provides insights into the histories of Kansas and the University of Kansas and of Harvard University as well as perspectives on higher education including the teaching of English rhetoric language literature journalism and oratory in the United States.