In his Introduction, Herschel Baker writes, “Although Romance, the dominant genre of secular literature throughout the later Middle Ages, has prompted floods of scholarship and speculation, it still bristles with unanswered problems of origin, development, and even definition.”

Helaine Newstead contributes “Malory and Romance”; A. Bartlett Giamatti, “Spenser: From Magic to Miracle”; Norman Rabkin, “The Holy Sinner and the Confidence Man: Illusion in Shakespeare’s Romances”; and Barbara K. Lewalski, “Milton: Revaluations of Romance.”

“His pursuit of learning gave force and unity to everything he did...in his books, as in his learning, he showed that scholarship could have an austere splendor of its own.”—Herschel Baker in his biographical sketch.

Hyder Rollins’ publications ranging from the Elizabethans to Keats, admirably exemplified his dedication to scholarship. This bibliography constitutes in terms of quantity alone, a record of formidable achievement; and the ordering of this wealth of publication gives scholars the means of easy reference to a sequence of impeccable research. Sponsored by the Department of English, Harvard University, this tribute to Hyder Rollins also includes a list of the more than one hundred doctoral dissertations directed by him over the course of three decades.