News from
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Communications and Publications, Stanhope Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544
Tel 609/258-3600; Fax 609/258-1301
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: Feb. 6, 1996
Contact: Jacquelyn Savani (609) 258-5729
Maurice Kelley
PRINCETON, N.J., Feb. 6--Maurice Kelley, aged 92, an expert on the poet John Milton and a Princeton University professor of English emeritus, died yesterday at the Merwick Unit of the Medical Center at Princeton. The cause of death was pneumonia, according to his daughter Elizabeth Quigg.
Kelley was one of the editors of the monumental eight-volume Complete Prose Works of John Milton, published by Yale University Press (1953-82); specifically he edited volumes six and eight and contributed to the other volumes. He was the author of two books, Additional Chapters on Thomas Cooper (1929) and This Great Argument (1941), his study of Milton.
Kelley twice served as the president of the Milton Society of America and was its Honored Scholar in 1971. A member of the Modern Language Association, he served on the editorial board of its journal PMLA from 1961 to 1966. Kelley was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1967.
Born May 22, 1903, in the Oklahoma Territory in what is now Okeene, Okla., Kelley received his bachelor's degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1927, M.A. from the University of Maine in 1929, and Ph.D. from Princeton in 1934, the year he joined the faculty as an instructor. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1938, associate professor in 1944, and professor in 1951. Kelley retired from the Princeton faculty in 1971. A popular teacher of undergraduates, he was an honorary member of the Classes of 1938 amd 1946. Kelley prided himself on being an excellent fly fisherman.
During World War II Kelley directed Princeton University's War Service Bureau, which served undergraduates who had entered the armed forces before completing their courses of study. From 1951 to 1953 he was acting University Librarian.
He was married to the former Doris Unzicker of Enid, Okla., who died in 1971.
Kelley is survived by a sister, Wynnefred Harmon of Ketchum, Idaho; three children, Dr. Marinda K. Schwartz of Bethesda, Md., David M. Kelley of Gallup, N.M., and Elizabeth Quigg of Wheaton, Ill.; five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren; and a niece, Nancy Hasenfratz of Kingfisher, Okla.
Graveside services for the family will be held in Oklahoma in the spring. Memorial contributions may be made to the Maurice Kelley Book Fund of the Princeton University Library. Arrangements are by Mather-Hodge Funeral Home of Princeton.