Happy Birthday Dr. Margaret Berry!!

We join with many others in celebrating the birthday of Dr. Margaret Berry, Professor Emeritus of John Carroll University of Cleveland, Ohio, and faithful Aid to Thomas Berry during the last 14 years of his life. In those 14 years she saw Thomas twice a day, a few hours each time. She scheduled visitors, arranged travel, proofed his correspondence, and organized his papers for his Harvard University archive and later the Greensboro Historical Museum, which also contains an archive of Dr. Berry’s papers.

Her life contributions extend well beyond this work she did for Thomas Berry. This biographical information on Dr. Berry is provided in the Berry-Vize family archives in the Greensboro Historical Museum.

Holding a St. John’s University Ph.D. in nineteenth-century English literature (1956) and a University of Pennsylvania postdoctoral degree in South Asian Studies (1969), Margaret has, in addition to extensive college and university teaching, authored three published books: The Chinese Classic Novels: An Annotated Bibliography of Chiefly English-Language Studies (1988, 2011), named by American Library Association’s May 1989 Choice among the year’s outstanding reference works; Pegasus Over Asia: Ventures in East-West Literary Analysis (1980, 2011); and Mulk Raj Anand, The Man and the Novelist (1971); numerous published articles; and two unpublished novels, The Tennis Club and Amaranthine Weed. Ford, Fulbright, Danforth, and NDEA awards join others Margaret won from the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, the Japan Foundation, the Association for Asian Studies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Besides Europe, her travels have included South America, Australia, China, Japan, and India. Offices held include presidency of the local American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and of the College English Association of Ohio, a five-year stint on MLA’s Asian Literatures Executive Committee, and long service on the Board of Directors of the national College English Association. Following 1993 retirement from John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, Margaret has made her home in her native Greensboro, where she serves as liaison for Harvard University’s Archives for Environmental Science and Public Policy as it acquires the papers of her brother, well-known ecologian, cultural historian, and author Thomas Berry.