Tristram P. Coffin

Tristram Potter Coffin
Born	(1922-02-13)February 13, 1922 San Marino, California, U.S.
Died	January 31, 2012(2012-01-31) (aged 89) South Kingstown, Rhode Island, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	University professor, academic, author
Known for	Leading scholar of ballad texts in the 20th century
Spouse(s)	Ruth Anne Hendrickson Coffin (May 28, 1922 - August 5, 2011)

Tristram Potter Coffin (February 13, 1922 – January 31, 2012) was a American folklorist and leading scholar of ballad texts in the 20th century.^[1] Coffin spent the bulk of his career at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a professor of English and a co-founder of the Folklore Department. He is the author of 20 books and more than 100 scholarly articles and reviews.^[2][3]

Biography

Coffin was born February 13, 1922 in San Marino, California to Tristram Roberts Coffin and Elsie Potter Robinson Coffin. He had three siblings. In 1927, after the death of T.R. Coffin, the family moved to Rhode Island, where T.P. Coffin attended Providence Country Day School, Moses Brown School ('39), and Haverford College ('43).

After three years in the old United States Army Air Corps and the Signal Corps during World War II, he took an MA and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.

Through his father, he is a direct descendant of Tristram Coffin, one of the original permanent settlers on Nantucket Island in 1660.

He married Ruth Anne Hendrickson (May 28, 1922 — August 5, 2011); the couple had four children, eleven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Career

Coffin was a past Associate Professor of English at Granville, Ohio's Denison University, where he taught and coached (tennis and soccer) for nine years (1949–58). He was elected to the Denison University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Tristram P. Coffin Scholarship was established in his and his wife Ruth Anne’s honor in 1994 by William G. Bowen of the The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

In 1959 he moved to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where he taught until his retirement. With MacEdward Leach, he co-founded the Department of Folklore at Penn, and was a full professor in both the English and Folklore departments, as well as Vice-Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

During his career he was also a guest professor at UCLA, the University of Rhode Island, Providence College, and in 1962 and 1963 was a Visiting Professor of Literature at the US Military Academy at West Point. Upon retirement, he became a Lecturer in Folklore at Providence College and at the University of Rhode Island.

Affiliations

Coffin was a former Secretary-Treasurer of the American Folklore Society, as well as Editor of their Memoir and their Bibliographical Series and was elected a Fellow of that group. A 1953 Guggenheim Fellow, he was the 20th century's top scholar of ballad texts, is listed in the Who's Who in America Millennium Edition, and was highly regarded internationally. He was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and Delta Upsilon fraternity. His club memberships included the Merion Cricket Club (Haverford, Pennsylvania), the URI University Club (Kingston, Rhode Island), The Dunes Club and the Point Judith Country Club (both Narragansett, Rhode Island).

Television

While in Philadelphia, he was active in educational television, appearing in over 100 shows on Folklore and Shakespeare. He was also host of the PBS show, “Lyrics and Legends”, which was shown nationally, and was in charge of editing the “American Folklore” series for Voice of America.

Publications

Dr. Coffin was an authority on English, Scottish and American ballads. His book, The British Traditional Ballad in North America, has been a standard reference text for over 50 years. In addition to numerous scholarly publications, he also published several more commercial works. His The Book of Christmas Folklore was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and The Old Ball Game: Baseball in Folklore and Fiction, Uncertain Glory - The Folklore of the American Revolution, The Female Hero and The Proper Book of Sexual Folklore were widely read. With Hennig Cohen, he also published Folklore of the American Holidays, another standard reference. Altogether Dr. Coffin published 20 books and over 100 articles, encyclopedia entries, and reviews.

References