Modern Language Association Honored Scholar of Early American Literature, 2008: Philip F. Gura

Abstract

Earlier this year, when I learned that the MLA Division of Ameri can Literature to 1800 would be honoring Philip R Gura with its Distin guished Scholar Award, the news at first seemed entirely fitting but also oddly premature and even misplaced?at least to the uninitiated. Ordi narily, one would expect that a major award of this kind might be deliv ered with a kind of backward view: into the hands of a scholar who, just on the verge of retirement, receives the honor at the conclusion of a long career after having contributed brilliantly to the profession. But instead, this year's award honors a perennially resourceful and productive re searcher whose energies show no signs of flagging, who even now is pre paring yet another new book for publication, this latest volume a history of the American Antiquarian Society, the learned society whose resources have been so vital to his own research over the decades. The remarkable