William Peterfield Trent

William Peterfield Trent, LL.D., D.C.L. (1862 – 1939) was a professor of English literature at Columbia University. He was born in Richmond, Virginia, and educated at the University of Virginia and at Johns Hopkins University. He taught at Sewanee, The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee, until 1900. While there, he founded and edited "The Sewanee Review". In 1900, he became professor of English literature at Columbia University, in New York City. There he turned his attention to the study of Daniel Defoe and to English history and literature of the 1680 to 1730 period. He edited "Robinson Crusoe" and wrote a biography and bibliography of Defoe in ten volumes (in manuscript to 1916). Professor Trent edited various works and published:
* "William Gilmore Simms" (1892)
* "The Authority of Criticism" (1899)
* "Robert E. Lee" (1899)
* "John Milton" (1899)
* "Progress of the United States during the Nineteenth Century" (1901)
* "A History of American Literature" (1903)
* "Greatness in Literature, and Other Papers" (1905)
* "Longfellow and Other Essays" (1910)
* "Great American Writers" (with John Erskine) (1912)