Bryce Conrad (1951–2017)

Bryce in 2014. (Photo courtesy of Anastasia Coles)

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Bryce Conrad, editor of the William Carlos Williams Review from 2004 to 2010, who died on 14 September 2017 after a long battle with brain cancer. On announcing the news of Bryce’s death to the Board of the journal and to the membership of the Williams Society, a warmth of feeling pervaded the responses both of those who knew him well or had only known him through correspondences. As tends to be the rhythm of friendships in academia they are often fed only by meeting at conferences but can be established in advance by knowing a person through their writing. I certainly had my first impression of Bryce through reading Refiguring America as a postgraduate in Leeds. To then be in contact with him by email confirmed what I felt on finally meeting him in person, namely that he was a warm, genuine, engaged and interested man, who could put you at ease in an instant. It remains the proudest moment of my professional life when, after guest editing the Spring issue of the Review in 2009, we did indeed meet at an MLA conference and he then asked me to take on the editorship of the journal. I can only begin to imagine the struggles Bryce had in keeping the journal going until his illness demanded he step back, and I will always be grateful to him for trusting me with a publication that he had revived in 2004 after its six-year publication hiatus. Indeed, Bryce’s wife, Anastasia Coles, noted that Bryce’s role in getting the Review back on its feet was something he regarded “as a highlight of his career. It gave him a chance to be connected with scholarship when his teaching and administrative duties tended to eat up all his time. He was always distraught though about not being able to give it as much time as he had wanted.”

In the celebration of Bryce’s work that follows I was happy to include his 1995 essay on Gertrude Stein both to complement its place in Todd Giles’s heartfelt recollection of his mentor and friend and to offer a sense of Bryce’s own academic starting points and interests. I am also grateful to John Lowney for sharing his memories of Bryce and for reflecting on the work of history and of language that helped bring so many of us closer to both Williams and ultimately to the much missed author of Refiguring America, Bryce Conrad.