Donald Johnson Greene was a literary critic, English professor, and scholar of British literature

British literature

British Literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. By far the largest part of British literature is written in the English language, but there are bodies of written works in Latin, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Cornish, Manx, Jèrriais,...

, particularly the eighteenth-century period. Known especially for his work on Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

, he also wrote on later authors such as Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

, Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

, Graham Greene

Graham Greene

Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...

, and Donald Davie

Donald Davie

Donald Alfred Davie was an English Movement poet, and literary critic. His poems in general are philosophical and abstract, but often evoke various landscapes.-Biography:...

.

Greene was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. He began teaching in rural elementary school

Elementary school

An elementary school or primary school is an institution where children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as elementary or primary education. Elementary school is the preferred term in some countries, particularly those in North America, where the terms grade school and grammar...

s and was a non-degreed teacher in Saskatchewan and Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

. World War II interrupted his academic pursuits; from 1941 to 1945 Greene was a lieutenant and captain in the Royal Canadian Artillery. Following the war he received a graduate fellowship from the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire

Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire

The Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire is a women's charitable organization based in Canada. The club was originally titled the "Federation of Daughters of the British Empire", which was founded by Margaret Clark Murray in 1900...

, and he received his M.A. in 1948 at the University College, London. He twice received a Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

, in 1957 and 1979.

Greene had achieved a considerable scholarly contribution even before graduating, with commentary on Samuel Johnson appearing in Notes and Queries

Notes and Queries

Notes and Queries is a long-running quarterly scholarly journal that publishes short articles related to "English language and literature, lexicography, history, and scholarly antiquarianism". Its emphasis is on "the factual rather than the speculative"...

, PMLA, Modern Language Notes, and the Review of English Studies. Later, he was the editor of Eighteenth-Century Studies

Eighteenth-Century Studies

Eighteenth-Century Studies is an academic journal established in 1966 and is the official publication of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. It focuses on all aspects of 18th century history. It is related to the annual Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture...

and Johnsonian News Letter, along with holding the position as president of the Johnson Society and served on the board of directors for the Johnson Society of Southern California.

He taught at the University of Saskatchewan

University of Saskatchewan

The University of Saskatchewan is a Canadian public research university, founded in 1907, and located on the east side of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. An "Act to establish and incorporate a University for the Province of Saskatchewan" was passed by the...

 beginning in 1948 and in 1952 he began Ph.D. studies in Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

's English department, whose faculty included James L. Clifford—another Samuel Johnson specialist—and Marjorie Hope Nicolson

Marjorie Hope Nicolson

Marjorie Hope Nicolson , was born February 18, 1894 in Yonkers, New York, USA, the daughter of Charles Butler Nicolson, editor-in-chief of the Detroit Free Press during World War I and later that paper's correspondent in Washington, DC, and Lissie Hope Morris.She graduated from the University of...

. Greene taught at least six other universities, including Brandeis University, the University of California at Riverside, the University of New Mexico, the University of Toronto, and the University of Wisconsin. He ended his career as Leo S. Bing Professor of English at the University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

from 1968 to 1984.

Selected works

• Johnsonian studies, 1887-1950: a survey and bibliography (with James Clifford). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1951.
• The politics of Samuel Johnson. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1960.
• Samuel Johnson: A Collection of Critical Essays (Twentieth Century Views series). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hal1, 1965.
• The age of exuberance; backgrounds to eighteenth-century English literature. New York: Random House, 1970.
• Samuel Johnson (Twayne's English Authors Series). New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970.
• Samuel Johnson; a survey and bibliography of critical studies (with James Clifford). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970.
• Samuel Johnson's library : an annotated guide. Victoria: University of Victoria, 1975.
• Political writings (Volume 10 of the Yale Complete Works of Samuel Johnson series). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
• Samuel Johnson; a collection of critical essays. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984.
• Greene centennial studies : essays presented to Donald Greene in the centennial year of the University of Southern California (with Paul Korshin and Robert Allen). Charlottesville : University Press of Virginia, 1984.
• Samuel Johnson (Oxford Authors). New York : Oxford University Press, 1984.
• A bibliography of Johnsonian studies, 1970-1985. Victoria: University of Victoria, 1987.
• Samuel Johnson: Updated Edition (Twayne's English Authors Series). Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989.
• Samuel Johnson: The major works (Oxford World Classics). Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.