# Stringfellow Barr

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{{short description|Founder of Great Books program at St. John's College}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2013}}
{{More citations needed|date=June 2011}}
{{Infobox historian
| birth_date = {{birth-date|January 15, 1897}}
| death_date = {{death date and age|February 2, 1982|January 15, 1897}}
| birth_place = [Suffolk, Virginia](/source/Suffolk%2C_Virginia)
| death_place = [Alexandria, Virginia](/source/Alexandria%2C_Virginia)
}}
'''Stringfellow Barr''' (January 15, 1897 – February 2, 1982) was an American historian, author, and former president of [St. John's College](/source/St._John's_College_(Annapolis%2FSanta_Fe)) in [Annapolis, Maryland](/source/Annapolis%2C_Maryland), where he, together with [Scott Buchanan](/source/Scott_Buchanan), instituted the [Great Books](/source/Great_Books) curriculum.

==Career==
Barr was the editor of ''[Virginia Quarterly Review](/source/Virginia_Quarterly_Review)'' from 1931 to 1937.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.vqronline.org/page.php/prmID/2|title=About VQR|publisher=Virginia Quarterly Review|access-date=2008-06-20|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080611092806/http://www.vqronline.org/page.php/prmID/2|archive-date=June 11, 2008|df=mdy-all}}</ref> He established and was president of the [Foundation for World Government](/source/Foundation_for_World_Government) from 1948 to 1958. In the 1950s, he taught classics at [Rutgers University](/source/Rutgers_University).

Barr wrote compact yet lucid historical surveys of three major periods of Western history. Two of his books, ''[The Will of Zeus](/source/The_Will_of_Zeus)'' and ''[The Mask of Jove](/source/The_Mask_of_Jove)'' deal with the Greeks and Romans, respectively. He also wrote ''[The Pilgrimage of Western Man](/source/The_Pilgrimage_of_Western_Man)'', dealing with Western history from the [Renaissance](/source/Renaissance) through the early post-World War II era.<ref>Barr, Stringfellow. ''The Pilgrimage of Western Man''. Westport Connecticut:  Greenwood Press, Publishers,  1974.  Originally published in 1962 by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, New York as KB-45 of Keystone Books. Originally copyrighted in 1949 by Stringfellow Barr. This title is currently (2012) out of print.</ref>

His nickname was "Winkie."{{ref|time}}

In a 1951 ''[New York Post](/source/New_York_Post)'' column, [Arthur Schlesinger Jr.](/source/Arthur_Schlesinger_Jr.) mocked Barr as belonging to the "solve-the-Russian-problem-by-giving-them-money school," along with [Carey McWilliams](/source/Carey_McWilliams_(journalist)) and [Thomas Emerson](/source/Thomas_I._Emerson).<ref>{{Cite news |last=Navasky |first=Victor |date=2007-03-08 |title=Schlesinger & The Nation |url=https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/schlesinger-nation/ |access-date=2024-05-27 |work=The Nation |language=en-US |issn=0027-8378}}</ref> Schlesinger said of them, "None of these gentlemen is a Communist, but none of them objects very much to Communism. They are the [Typhoid Mary](/source/Typhoid_Mary)s of the left, bearing the germs of the infection even if not suffering obviously from the disease."{{ref|navasky}}

Barr's views on the poor quality of American education and an American society driven by consumerist ideology are presented in ironic terms in ''[Purely Academic](/source/Purely_Academic)'' (1958), a classic academic novel set in an anonymous Corn Belt university during the [McCarthy period](/source/McCarthy_period), as when a character in the story says that

:Many observers here and abroad note a kind of higher illiteracy in our college graduates. But we like it that way. In our cars we like horsepower; in our studies we like slow-motion and low-gear. In education the intellectually second-rate does not shock us. To insist on the first-rate would be arrogant. Anyhow, if we are so second-rate, how come we are the richest nation in recorded history and the fattest people on earth?<ref>New York: Simon and Schuster, page 19</ref>

In 1959, Barr was one of a number of signatories to a petition asking the U. S. Congress to abolish the [House Committee on Unamerican Activities](/source/House_Committee_on_Unamerican_Activities). Other notable signatories included [Eleanor Roosevelt](/source/Eleanor_Roosevelt) and [Reinhold Niebuhr](/source/Reinhold_Niebuhr).

Barr wrote ''The Kitchen Garden Book''  (New York: Viking Press, 1956) with Stella Standard.  The ''Kitchen Garden'' is a manual on growing and cooking common vegetables.

''[New York Times](/source/The_New_York_Times)'' reviewer [Edmund Fuller](/source/Edmund_Fuller) called his 1958 novel, ''Purely Academic,'' "bitterly hilarious," "sadistically satirical," and "funny and appalling."{{ref|fuller}}

Barr died on February 2, 1982.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/annualobituary190000unse_y0k1/page/51/mode/1up?q=January|title=The Annual Obituary, 1982|year=1983|publisher=[St. James Press](/source/St._James_Press)|editor-first1=Janet|editor-last1=Podell|editor-first2=Steven|editor-last2= Anzovin|isbn=9780912289014|chapter=(Frank) Stringfellow Barr|pages=51-52}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/05/obituaries/stringfellow-barr-educator-dies-pressed-study-of-100-great-books.html | title=Stringfellow Barr, Educator, Dies; Pressed Study of 100 Great Books | work=The New York Times | date=February 5, 1982 | last1=Dunlap | first1=David W. }}</ref>

==Notes==
#{{note|time}} "[https://time.com/archive/6823283/colonist/ Colonist]", Time Magazine, August 19, 1946.
#{{note|navasky}} Navasky, Victor, 1980; ''Naming Names''; p.&nbsp;54 of the 2003 reprint by Hill and Wang; {{ISBN|0-8090-0183-7}}

==See also==
*[Liberal Arts, Inc.](/source/Liberal_Arts%2C_Inc.)

==References==
{{Reflist}}
#Barr, Stringfellow. ''American National Biography''. 2:222–224 (1999)
#{{note|fuller}} Edward Fuller, "In the Groves of Academe Without a Compass," The New York Times January 5, 1958, p. BR4

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
* [http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=ascead;cc=ascead;q1=SC.1952.01;rgn=main;view=text;didno=US-PPiU-sc195201 Hervey Allen Papers, 1831-1965, SC.1952.01, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barr, Stringfellow}}
Category:1897 births
Category:1982 deaths
Category:20th-century American novelists
Category:20th-century American male writers
Category:Rutgers University faculty
Category:Historians of the United States
Category:People from Suffolk, Virginia
Category:St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) faculty
Category:American male novelists
Category:20th-century American historians
Category:Novelists from Virginia
Category:Novelists from New Jersey
Category:Novelists from Maryland
Category:Presidents of St. John's College
Category:American male non-fiction writers
Category:Historians from Virginia

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Stringfellow Barr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stringfellow_Barr) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stringfellow_Barr?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.