Major Works
Novels
- Lily (1964) published under pseudonym Gilbert Terrell
- Willa (1961) published under pseudonym Gilbert Terrell
- Missy (1961) published under pseudonym Gilbert Terrell
- The Prisoners (1956)
Short Stories
- Souvenir (1953)
Scripts and Music
- Faulkner’s Mississippi: Land Into Legend (film script)
- The Battle of Harrykin Creek (book and music)
Biography
Evans Harrington was born in 1925 in Birmingham, Alabama. His family moved several times, once in Alabama and several times in Mississippi. He spent his teenage years in Jones County, Mississippi. After graduating high school, Harrington served in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1945. After the war was over, he attended Mississippi College, where he earned a B.A. He taught high school English in Decatur, Mississippi, for two years before earning his M.A. at the University of Mississippi in 1951.
After teaching at the University High School for four years, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi in 1968. He was worked at the University of Mississippi from 1951 to 1988, first as an English instructor and then full professor. Harrington was a longtime chair of the English Department there and a noted scholar. He was at the forefront of the writer-in-residence searches which brought authors like Willie Morris and Barry Hannah to the University. He also worked on the committees for the Southern Literary Festival and the Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference.
His first published work, the short story Souvenir, appeared in the 1953 issue of Today’s Woman. He has written and had published 13 additional short stories, multiple reviews and essays. These have appeared in various publications including The Saturday Evening Post, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Collier’s, and others.
The Prisoners, the only novel published under his own name, was published in 1956. It was inspired by the stories his father (a Baptist minister and the chaplain at Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi) told him and Harrington’s own visits to Parchman. Harrington published three additional books under the pseudonym Gilbert Terrell: Lily (1964), Willa (1961) and Missy (1961). Harrington also wrote the script for the film Faulkner’s Mississippi: Land into Legend.
Harrington co-founded the Faulkner and Yoknapatwpha Conference and directed 21 conferences during his career – from 1974 to 1994. For the 1976 conference, he wrote the lyrics and story for The Battle of Harrykin Creek, a musical comedy based on Faulkner’s short story “My Grandmother Millard and General Bedford Forrest and the Battle of Harrykin Creek.” (Andrew Fox wrote the music.) In later conferences, he and his wife selected and arranged passages for dramatic readings, called Voices from Yoknapatawpha.
Harrington served as the faculty advisor for the student literary magazine, Images, at the University of Mississippi. In 1972, he was involved in a lawsuit against the university regarding free speech pertaining to the university’s refusal to print two specific stories due to ‘the use of “offensive” words and matters of “taste” (Hamblin, 2017).
Harrington served three terms as president of the Southern Literary Festival Association and was in charge of its programs in 1965, 1978 and 1987.
He and his wife Betty lived in Oxford, Mississippi. Evans Harrington died in 1997.
Related Websites
- Fascinating interview with Dr. Evans Harrington by John Jones (1980)
- Ole Miss former students and colleagues remember Harrington
Bibliography
- The University of Mississippi Libraries Evans B. Harrington collection with historical biography
- Interview with Dr. Evans Harrington (1980)
- Living in Mississippi: The Life and Times of Evans Harrington. 2017. Robert W. Hamblin. Published by The University Press of Mississippi.