UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State is grieving the loss of Robert D. Hume, Evan Pugh University Professor Emeritus of English, who passed away on Monday, Nov. 20.
Hume was born on July 25, 1944, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to David N. and Aloyse (Bottenwiser) Hume but grew up in suburban Boston, where his father was a professor of analytic chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He graduated from Haverford College with honors in 1966 and then spent a year completing graduate work at Harvard University — during which time he married his high school girlfriend, Kathryn “Kit” Hume, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor Emerita of English at Penn State, who survives.
Hume went on to receive his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969 and began his academic career at Cornell University later that same year. He joined the Penn State faculty as professor of English in 1977, was named a distinguished professor in 1990, and then named Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English Literature the following year. He was named an Evan Pugh University Professor — the highest academic distinction bestowed upon a Penn State faculty member — in 1998 and became Evan Pugh University Professor Emeritus upon his retirement in July 2023.
Hume was a towering figure in the study of English drama from 1660 to 1800, with additional scholarly interests in opera, historicism and the economics of the period — particularly as they related to theaters and the publishing of dramatic and literary works. He particularly loved investigating archives and writing about his findings — even as an undergraduate at Haverford, he carefully studied academic journals and eventually had two of his undergraduate papers published in Shakespeare Quarterly and the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
Hume’s solo books included “Dryden’s Criticism” (1970), “The Development of English Drama in the late Seventeenth Century” (1976), and “Reconstructing Contexts: The Aims and Principles of Archaeo-Historicism” (1999). He also participated in collaborative book projects with his primary collaborator, theater historian Judith Milhous, and with Curtis Price, and others on “Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth Century London” (1995, 2000) and “The Publication of Plays in London 1660-1800 (2015).” He co-edited lost plays of the period that he discovered, and with Harold Love edited the Oxford edition of works associated with George Villiers, the second duke of Buckingham. In all, Hume published 16 books and edited books; four monographs; 145 articles, 29 notes and numerous reviews; he was also working on five additional academic projects at the time of his death.
“Rob was an enormous presence in his fields of 17th- and 18th-century British drama, theater history, and opera history; he pioneered work in the economics of theater, literature, and art,” said Mark Morrison, Liberal Arts Professor and head of the Penn State Department of English. “He was also a conscientious doctoral supervisor who went above and beyond to ‘professionalize’ his students and help them establish themselves in whatever they wanted to pursue next — whether it be within or outside academia.
"Rob’s success in the undergraduate classroom was also a constant, and he very much enjoyed teaching classes that allowed him to connect with students during their first few years. He will be truly missed.”