Leeds Barroll July 20, 1928 – April 22, 2022

Rockville, Maryland – Former University of South Carolina Professor J. Leeds Barroll passed away on April 22, 2022 in Rockville, Maryland. Professor Barroll was a world renowned Shakespearean scholar. He founded the “Journal of Shakespeare Studies,” which he edited and which contained essays and studies by critics throughout the world. Professor Barroll was the author of numerous books and articles. He was an expert on the historical context of Shakespeare’s plays. Among his areas of expertise was the relationship of the plague to the Shakespearean stage.

His books included Artificial Persons; Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare’s Theater; Anna of Denmark; Shakespearean Tragedy: Genre, Tradition, and Change in Antony and Cleopatra; and numerous articles.

Professor Barroll was born July 20, 1928, in Lausanne, Switzerland. His father was also an English professor. Professor Barroll grew up in Philadelphia. He entered Harvard University at the age of 15. His studies were interrupted by service in the military; among his duty stations were services as a train conductor in occupied Japan right after World War II. This service, combined with riding trollies and commuter trains in Philadelphia and Cambridge, Massachusetts, led to a lifelong love of trains, which he passed along to his children. Even through the present, when everyone else was traveling by plane, Professor Barroll travelled as often as possible throughout the country and world by train.

Professor Barroll graduated from Harvard in 1950. Shortly thereafter, he married his first wife, Rayna Klatzkin, and soon thereafter had two children before finishing graduate school. After teaching for two years at the Asheville School for Boys, Professor Barroll went through the PhD program at Princeton University in an unheard of 3 years, receiving both his Master’s and his PhD on the same day in 1956. Professor Barroll taught at the University of Texas, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, Vanderbilt University, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Up until his death, he was a Scholar in Residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. Professor Barroll lived in Washington, DC, and was one of the few people who commuted from the District of Columbia into Maryland, instead of the other way around.

Professor Barroll is survived by his wife of 38 years, Professor Susan Zimmerman, and by his three children, J. Leeds Barroll, IV (Kate) of Lexington, South Carolina, James E. Barroll (Robbie) of Hendersonville, North Carolina, and Ellen Barroll of Phoenix, Arizona. Professor Barroll required that prior to entering seventh grade, all of his children must spend the summer writing 300 word themes every day or reading 100 page selections from classics, after which an oral report had to be defended in the face of Professor Barroll’s detailed questions. Professor Barroll was a perfectionist and as far as he was concerned, there was no truth to the opinion that the liberal arts are lacking in rigorous methodology.

Published by The State on Apr. 27, 2022, more info: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/thestate/name/leeds-barroll-obituary?id=34441503