​​​​​​​​​​​Russell High School​

Today

1957

603 North School Street, Normal, IL 61761-1618
H-309-452-1204  C-309-825-7788
wwmorgan@ilstu.edu

Birthday: August 19, 1940

I left Russell during my junior year when my family moved to Rome, so I graduated from Rome High School before going on to North Georgia and later the University of Tennessee in Knoxville for graduate school. I was in the Army from 1966-69 and spent part of my time teaching English at West Point. Meanwhile, I had married and my wife and I had two sons: William Eric (1967) and Jason Francis (1970). Since 1969, I have been a professor of English at Illinois State University where I've taught courses in Victorian Literature, Poetry, and Literary Theory. I've also taken a dozen or more groups of students to England for on-location study over the years. In the past 12 years or so, I have begun to write and publish poetry. I now am retired and have two grandchildren (Jasper Thomas and Julia Willow Morgan). Besides continuing my academic work (I manage a website on Thomas Hardy's poetry, produce a radio show featuring poetry, give occasional visiting lectures and poetry readings, and am on the editorial board of several scholarly journals), I now spend my time in community work (historic preservation), reading, writing, and travel. 

william w. morgan

​C l a s s  o f  1 9 5 8