Chancellor Professor of English

Interim Chair, Philosophy Department

Office: Tyler 329

Office Hours, Fall 2009: M W 1:30-2:30 or by appointment

Phone: 757-221-3932

E-mail: tlmeye@wm.edu

Background and Research and Teaching Interests.

My undergraduate degree is from Lawrence University; my M.A. and Ph.D. are from the University of Chicago. I also studied at the Sorbonne. My main research interests are in Victorian poetry, especially the nefariously subversive Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909).  I've edited several lost works by William Sharp/Fiona Macleod and have underway an edition of a notebook of mostly unpublished poems by the winner of the 1887 Newdigate Prize at Oxford, Sydney A. Alexander.  T.A.J. Burnett and I are editing the Complete Poems of Swinburne, in four volumes, for Pickering and Chatto.

I also have a research interest in local history and William and Mary history; I focus on the century forgotten (or, rather, erased) in Williamsburg-- the 19th Century.   But I'm also working on the only poet who has ever been a president of William and Mary, William Dawson, and on the Bray School as well as on the Williamsburg years and poetry of Virginia Hamilton Adair, who taught briefly in the Department.

Besides the Victorian Age course, I from time to time teach Modern British Literature and Advanced Expository Writing. The introductory survey, English 204, which covers 18th and 19th century British literature, is one of my favorites to teach.

Personal:

My wife, Sheila, is a graduate of W&M, Class of '78, and the best real estate agent in Williamsburg.   Our daughter, Deborah Boyle, is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of Charleston, and our son, Blake Meyers, is a Professor at the University of Delaware, where he is Interim Chair of the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences.

Looking for a good read?  Try my father's most recent prize-winning novel, The Death at Awahi.

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