David V. Erdman

The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is literary studies, literary criticism and English studies. Works named in the authority record are Blake: Prophet Against Empire, The Binding (et cetera) of Vala and Blake's Vision of Slavery. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship.

Erdman was born on November 4, 1911, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Carl Morris and Myrtle (Vorse) Erdman. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Carleton College in 1933. He then proceeded to Princeton University where he received a Ph.D. in 1936. After graduating from Princeton he married Virginia Bohan in 1937.

Throughout his career in academia Erdman held a number of university positions. After graduating from Princeton in 1936, he became a professor of English at the Agriculture, Mechanical and Normal College (now the University of Arkansas at Monticello). He held this position until the next year when he became an instructor of English at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. He stayed at Madison from 1937 until 1941. For the next year, he was an instructor in English at Olivet College, Olivet, MI. During the 1942-43 academic year, he was an assistant professor at The Citadel in Charleston, SC. For the next three years, he did not hold position at a university, but rather worked for the United Auto Workers-Congress of Industrial Organizations (UAW-CIO) in Detroit, MI as an editor in the education department, from 1943 until 1946. In 1948, he returned to the academy as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, a position he held until 1954. In 1968, Erdman became a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and began editing publications for the New York Public Library, New York, NY. During his career he was also member of multiple scholarly societies, including Modern Language Association of America, Keats-Shelley Association, Shaw Society, and the English Institute (of which he was chair in 1960).