History of Reading News. Vol.XIX No.2 (1996:Spring)
by Earl Hanson

I was happy to read in the spring issue of our newsletter that Nancy Mavrogenes had joined the History of Reading Special Interest Group. Now, it is my sad responsibility to report that she died of cancer on May 6, 1995.

From her enrollment in the local country day school, to her senior year of high school where she was one of two students enrolled in Latin III, to her graduation from Wells College, Phi Beta Kappa with distinction in Greek, to the attainment of her Master's degree in Greek language and literature from Bryn Mawr, to her appointment as a Fulbright Scholar to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Nancy was destined for recognition as an outstanding scholar and advocate of literature and languages of the ancient world.

To those of us interested in the history of reading, however, it was her impressive dissertation on the history of William S. Gray, William Scott Gray: Leader of Teachers and Shaper of American Reading Instruction, completed ten years ago at the University of Chicago, for which she was best known. To a considerable extent, her research served as the basis for the 1985 William S. Gray Centennial Program sponsored by the International Reading Association. An influential writer on a wide range of topics, she also received national recognition when the New York Times reviewed her treatise on the importance of including classical studies in the secondary curriculum.

Recently, I was invited to examine Nancy's personal library for the purpose of making recommendations for its disposition. There, with the Journal of Reading was the Journal of Classics, with the early editions of Ernest Hemingway, the Gray-Elson readers, etc., a collection of books and journals reflecting the depth and diversity of a remarkable intellect. She was indeed a unique and competent scholar who contributed significantly to the history of reading.

Editors' Note: Nancy Mavrogenes' publications include "William S. Gray: The Person," in William S. Gray: Teacher, Scholar, Leader, ed. Jennifer S. Stevenson (Newark: International Reading Association, 1985), 1-23. In addition, she wove the past into the present in her "Young Children Composing Then and Now: Recent Research on Emergent Literacy, " in Visible Language 21 (1987): 271-97.