Sheldon Zitner

S.P. Zitner was born in New York City on April 20, 1924, and spent over three years with the US Army during World War II, two of them in the South Pacific. Upon his discharge, he took his BA at Brooklyn College, his MA at City College of New York and his PhD at Duke University. He taught English Literature at Hampton Institute, Virginia, and Grinnell College, Iowa, before coming to Canada to teach at Trinity College, University of Toronto. He remained at Trinity College from 1969 until his retirement 20 years later, and for exemplary teaching he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Sacred Letters. He died in Toronto on April 26, 2005 at the age of 81. Sheldon Zitner’s academic work includes six books — critical studies, editions and collections — and numerous articles, most of them on Shakespeare and other Renaissance dramatists. His poetry has appeared in many American and Canadian journals, including the Nation, Poetry, the Antigonish Review, and Queen’s Quarterly. Two earlier collections of poetry, The Asparagus Feast (1999) and Before We Had Words (2002), were published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, and a chapbook, Missing Persons, was published by Junction Books in 2003.