In a teaching career that spanned forty years, Dr. Morse Shepard Allen taught undergraduates as the James J. Goodwin Professor of English and Literature, Trinity College. His undergraduate studies were completed at Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) and at Columbia University, where he received an A.M. in 1913. Just after receiving his PhD from Princeton, he taught at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1919, then joined the staff of the Trinity English Department in 1920. Outside of the Trinity community, Dr. Allen served as the President of the New England College English Association for the 1949-1950 term, and wrote book reviews for the Hartford Courant Book Review section from 1952-1967. From 1949 until his retirement from Trinity in 1961, he served as head of the English Department. In his obituary, the Hartford Courant said that Allen’s almost 1,000 book reviews were “marked by erudite language and scholarly humor.”
An archival collection of “Morse S. Allen papers” is available and open for research at the Watkinson Library. A finding aid is available: View Finding aid
See also obituary of “Dr. Morse S. Allen,” New York Times, December 5, 1967,External Link, and Columbia Alumni News, Vol. 11, page 427, NY Times