John Crossett Papers

1941 Graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York

1947 Graduated fro Columbia College, Phi Beta Kappa, with ‘honors and special distinction in English, Latin and Greek, and history

Taught in a high school in Enosberg Falls, Vermont

Went into insurance business as an insurance adjuster.

Accepted to English Department of the graduate program at Harvard University

1954-57 Teaching Fellow, Harvard University.  Doctoral Dissertation on English translation of Homer’s Iliad

1957-58 Taught at Boston University

1958 Received Doctorate from Harvard University

1958-1962 Assistant Professor of English at Hamilton College.  While at Hamilton he prepared a Handbook of Composition, Breviary of English Grammar, used at Grinnell and Cornell Colleges.  He designed books and set type on his own press, The Virgil Press, for his own poetry and that of others.  Principal publications at The Virgil Press included Two Voices, written with his sister, Barbara Crossett Manosh, Adam and Eve Poems, and The Wreath of Seasons, both by John Crossett.

1962-62 Associate Professor of English an Acting Head of the Department of Humanities at Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa.

1963-70 Associate Professor of Classics at Grinnell College

1970-1981 Professor of Classics at Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Iowa until his death in 1981.

1977 Founded Hesperis Institute for Humanitistic Studies.  This institute was intended by Crossett to be the foundation of a future college taught on the model of Plato‘s Academy.  Taught at the Hesperis Institute during the summers of 1977-1980.

1979 Received the American Philological Association’s prize for excellence in teaching.  1979 was the first year such an award was given.

(Information for the biographical notes was taken from Arieti, James A. “John M. Crossett: a Memoir,” in Stump, Donald V., et al., eds. Hamartia: The Concept of Error in the Western Tradition. Essays in Honor of John M. Crossett. NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983.)