John Barth, local author and friend to Washington College
Renowned Maryland author John Barth, an innovative fiction novelist and literary essayist with strong ties to the Eastern Shore and Washington College, has died at the age of 93.
Born in 1930, John Barth grew up in a house near the Choptank River in Cambridge, Maryland, where his father operated the local soda fountain. “Jack,” as he was known, began his literary career by writing for the school newspaper at Cambridge High School. He briefly studied jazz at Juilliard before attending Johns Hopkins University, where he received his B.A. in 1951 and his M.A. in 1952. His teaching career took him to Pennsylvania State University, SUNY at Buffalo, Boston University, and finally Johns Hopkins University, where he taught from 1973 until his retirement in 1995.
The Eastern Shore provided the flavor and setting for many of his works. The Floating Opera, his first novel and a contender for the National Book Award in 1957, was inspired
by his childhood memories of the James Adams Floating 
Theatre, which would dock at Long Wharf in Cambridge. The Sot-Weed Factor, published in 1960 and considered his foray into postmodernism, tells an imagined
story of humorous and bizarre adventures of real-life poet Ebenezer Cooke in colonial
Maryland and London. The Eastern Shore provided the backdrop for 1982’s “Sabbatical:
A Romance” and 1987’s “The Tidewater Tales,” as well.
John Barth first visited the Literary House (then Richmond House) at Washington College in the late 1970s, where he met with students and faculty. Upon his retirement from Johns Hopkins, he came for a much longer visit, becoming a Senior Fellow at the college. He bought a home on Langford Creek just outside Chestertown and spent a lot of time with his friend of many decades, Professor Bob Day. He added our own Washington College Literary Award to his long list of accolades, joining Toni Morrison, Galway Kinnell, Richard Wilbur, Mavis Gallant, and others.
In 2004, The Literary House Press published a special edition of a speech given by Barth at Miller Library in October 1992, celebrating the addition of thelibrary’s 200,000th volume, entitled “Browsing.” While Barth’s papers, letters, and manuscripts reside with the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins, you will find all of his works at Washington College’s Miller Library, in the Maryland Collection.
