In Memoriam: Linda Haenlein Peterson, 1948-2015

Linda H. Peterson, the Neil Gray Jr. Professor of English at Yale University died late last month in New Haven, Connecticut. She was 66 years old and had suffered from cancer.

“Linda’s untimely passing is a great loss,” wrote Langdon Hammer, professor and chair of the English department, in an email announcing her death. “She has been a leader in the Yale English department for almost 40 years, including seven years as department chair. Her good sense and profound civility have deeply shaped who we are and how we do things as a department faculty, always for the better. Beyond the English department, there are few professors in any department who have served Yale in as many capacities over as long a period.”

Professor Peterson was a native of Saginaw, Michigan. She earned a bachelor’s degree in literature at Wheaton College, a master’s degree in English at the University of Rhode Island, and a Ph.D. at Brown University. She joined the faculty at Yale in 1977.

Dr. Peterson was the author or editor of several books including Becoming a Woman of Letters: Myths of Authorship and Facts of the Victorian Market (Princeton University Press, 2009) and the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women’s Writing (Cambridge University Press, 2015).