Leo Damrosch spent his boyhood in the mountains of the Philippines. He was born in 1941 in Manila where his parents were Episcopalian missionaries. Three months later the war arrived and the family was interned with 1,500 other foreigners in the Los Baños prison camp in Luzon. In 1945 they were liberated by a dramatic airborne operation. After the family’s return to the U.S. in 1950, they lived in various towns in Maine.

Educated at Yale (BA summa cum laude, 1963), Trinity College, Cambridge (Marshall Scholar, first class honors, 1966), and Princeton (PhD, 1968), he taught in the English departments at the University of Virginia (1966-83), University of Maryland at College Park (1983-89), and since 1989 at Harvard where he is now a Research Professor.

His most recent book is Tocqueville’s Discovery of America (2010), released in paperback in April 2011. He is also author of the biography Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius, a 2005 National Book Award Finalist for nonfiction and winner of the Winship/PEN New England Award for nonfiction, as well as seven other books on literary and historical subjects.

He has four sons, and lives in Newton, Massachusetts with his wife, Joyce Van Dyke, and the two youngest, Luke and Nicholas.

Contact:
Leo Damrosch, Department of English,
Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138

damrosch (at) fas.harvard.edu