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“D” is for Davenport, Guy (1927-2005)

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“D” is for Davenport, Guy (1927-2005). Writer, educator, illustrator. A native of Anderson, Davenport graduated from Duke and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He began his teaching career at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1952 while conducting research for an article he formed a lasting acquaintance with the modernist poet Ezra Pound—the subject of his Harvard dissertation. In 1963 he began teaching at the University of Kentucky. He considered himself a teacher foremost and his writings as “an extension of the classroom.” He was a prolific writer in multiple genres and an illustrator of his own books. He authored more than twenty books, including two poetry collections and book-length translations of classical texts by Sappho and Diogenes. An intellectual jack-of-all-trades, Guy Davenport was a South Carolinian who became an internationally respected man of letters.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.