Samuel F. Pickering Jr.

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Samuel F. Pickering (born September 30, 1941) is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. His unconventional teaching style was the inspiration for the character of Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams in the film Dead Poets Society. Pickering specializes in the familiar essay, children's literature, nature writers, and 18th and 19th century English literature. In addition to teaching, he has published many collections of non-fiction personal essays as well as over 200 articles.

Sam Pickering was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, where he attended (and later taught at) Montgomery Bell Academy. He received his B.A. from University of the South, his second B.A. and M.A. from St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and his second M.A. and Ph.D from Princeton University. In addition, he was awarded a D.Litt. by Oglethorpe University. His employment history includes assistant professor at Dartmouth College (1970–1978), associate professor at the University of Connecticut (1978-1984), and professor at UConn (1984 to the present.) A Fulbright recipient, Pickering has lectured in classrooms in Jordan and Syria; he has also held research posts at the University of Western Australia as well as the University of Edinburgh. His curriculum vitae provides further information.

Critique Magazine's web site has archived some interviews with Pickering, "A Visit with Pickering" and "On Writing". An excerpt from Pickering "On Writing":

...I tie all kinds of things together because I like to drift. That’s the way life is. Some folks don’t like that.

Often, I just write about—I mean, Scott Sanders came here—he’s a nice man—he gave a talk on one of his books. He talked about all the tools he could use in the books. So, I wrote an essay called “Tool Less” because I can’t use any tools. [laughs] So I wrote about that and I proved that the people who couldn’t use tools were more flexible. They were very nice people . People who used tools thought that things could be made and fashioned to last. People who didn’t use tools knew that nothing lasts so they were not zealots of any kind. He thought I was a complete savage and a fascist at that. [laughs] So, that was the occasion for that.

Pickering is married and has three children. He divides his time between Storrs and his summer home in Nova Scotia.

[edit] List of published works (books)

• The Moral Tradition in English Fiction, 1785-1850 (1976)
• John Locke and Children’s Books in Eighteenth-Century England (1981)
• Children’s Literature. Vols. 8-10 (co-editor, 1979-81)
• A Continuing Education (1985)
• The Right Distance (1987)
• May Days (1988)
• Still Life (1990)
• Let It Ride (1991)
• Moral Instruction and Fiction for Children, 1749-1820 (1993)
• Trespassing (1994)
• Walkabout Year (1995)
• The Blue Caterpillar (1997)
• Living to Prowl (1997)
• Deprived of Unhappiness (1998)
• A Little Fling (1999)
• The Last Book (2001)
• Waltzing the Magpies (2004)
• The Best of Pickering (2004)
• Letters to a Teacher (2004)
• Indian Summer (2005)