Harrison Mosher Hayford, a brilliant yet humble man who was the world’s foremost scholar on Herman Melville, died Dec. 10 at Wagner Health Care Center in Evanston. He was 85.
Hayford, a Northwestern English professor for 43 years, was part of the revival of American literature that began after World War II. During this time, scholars sought to edit American classics to more closely resemble what their authors had originally intended.
Hayford led a team of scholars in editing the Northwestern-Newberry edition of “The Writings of Herman Melville,” a 15-volume series published in the 1960s.
In 1962, Hayford and a colleague published an edition of Melville’s “Billy Budd,” which was a text found unfinished on Melville’s desk after his death in 1893. Hayford and former student Hershel Parker edited the Norton Critical Edition of “Moby Dick” in 1967. A second edition was published in the fall of 2001.
Hayford’s son, Charles Hayford, a visiting NU history professor, said his father took tremendous satisfaction in being part of a generation of Melville scholars.
Later in his life, Hayford, known as “Harry” by his friends, became a well-known book dealer.
Jeff Rice, a history lecturer at NU and the former owner of Great Expectations bookstore, said Hayford was committed to editing the text right. A longtime friend of Hayford’s, Rice said Hayford believed that great literature should not be restricted to a select few.
With this unpretentious view, Hayford would visit Great Expectations with photocopies of Melville’s handwriting and would ask anyone to try and decipher Melville’s writing, Rice said.
Hayford was more likely to quote Mark Twain, his son said.
“He talked about literature the way he would tell a dirty limerick,” Charles Hayford said.
English Prof. Lawrence Lipking said Hayford was “very down to earth and generous — not academic in the pedantry sense.”
In 1942, Hayford accepted a teaching position at NU after earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English from Tufts University in 1938 and 1940. Hayford received a doctoral degree from Yale University in 1945.
Northwestern University Press will publish his collected essays on Melville this year.
“If there is an afterlife, I’d like to think Melville would be waiting there to shake (Hayford’s) hand and thank him,” said Susan Harris, director of Northwestern University Press.
Besides his son Charles, Hayford is survived by three other children: Ralph Harrison of Toms River, N.J.; Alison Hayford of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; Deborah Weiss of Valparaiso, Ind.; and eight grandchildren. His wife, Josephine Wishart Hayford, died in 1996.
