of Beatrix Elizabeth (Baldwin) and Leicester Crosby Lewis, an Episcopal minister. After preparing at Episcopal Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy, he earned his B.A. in 1939 at Harvard University and his M.A. in 1941 at the University of Chicago, where he also received a Ph.D. degree in 1954. In the meantime he volunteered for war service in 1942, enlisting as a private in the U.S. Air Force and becoming a second lieutenant, serving in the Middle East, North Africa, and Italy, commanding a unit in Tuscany, Italy,serving in the British-U.S. intelligence service known as "M.I. X" and receiving the Legion of Merit Award in 1944 for service behind enemy lines, After the war, he continued as a commanding officer of the Northern Italy War Crimes Investigation Team and was discharged from service in 1946 with the rank of major. After returning from the war Lewis pursued his fascination with world literature, which was already awakened by his Harvard teachers. He also developed a lifelong fascination and love for Italy after visiting as a child, and serving there in the war. He and his wife Nancy visited there regularly for much of their lives, and Lewis later wrote a book on the city of Florence. Lewis taught at Bennington College 1948–1950, and was dean of studies at the Salzburg Seminar in Austria 1950–1951. He was a visiting lecturer at Smith College 1951-1952 and a resident fellow at Princeton University in 1952–1954, then joined the faculty at Rutgers University as a professor of English until his Yale University appointment in 1959. In 1977 he was appointed the Neil Gray, Jr. Professor of English and American Studies, reflecting his abiding interest in American literature and American cultural life. Honors Lewis received numerous honors for his research and contributions, including a grant for literary achievement from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, plus honorary degrees from several universities. He was invited to serve on both the National Book Award jury for fiction, on which he was charged with selecting the best novel of 1964, and on the 1977 jury for biography and autobiography. In 1988 he was one of 14 scholars chosen to advise the National Endowment for the Humanities on the state of American culture. While teaching at Yale, Lewis lived in a house in Bethany, Connecticut. He worked in an octagonally-shaped writing studio situated