W. H. (Willard Higley) Durham

Willard Higley Durham was an American literary scholar, teacher, and editor, born in New Haven, Connecticut, on July 23, 1883, and died on June 7, 1955. He studied at Yale, earning his A.B. in 1904 and his Ph.D. in 1909, then began his teaching career there before later joining the University of California, Berkeley.

At Berkeley, Durham taught English and built a reputation around Shakespeare and the history of drama. He worked on classroom-friendly editions and anthologies, including An Introduction to Shakespeare, and he also edited Shakespeare plays for the Yale Shakespeare series, helping generations of readers encounter the plays with more context and clarity.

His work sits at the meeting point of scholarship and teaching: serious in its learning, but meant to be useful in the classroom. That practical, reader-focused approach is a big part of why his books and editions still show up in library catalogs and public-domain collections today.