Dearing, Vinton (Adams) 1920–2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born July 30, 1920, in San Francisco, CA; died April 6, 2005, in Santa Monica, CA. Educator and author. Dearing was an English professor, biblical scholar, and editor for the twenty-volume The Works of John Dryden. A bright student from a young age, he entered Harvard University when he was just fifteen, earning his B.A. in 1940 and an M.A. in 1942. During World War II, he put his education on hold to serve in the U.S. Army, where he was an anti-aircraft artillery instructor and achieved the rank of captain. Returning to Harvard after the war, he completed his Ph.D. in 1949. Dearing spent his entire academic career at the University of California at Los Angeles, beginning in 1949 as an instructor and becoming involved in the Dryden project as a text editor in 1956. The Dryden series, which reprinted the most authoritative versions of all of the seventeenth-century author's writings, were a much-needed update of the eighteen-book series originally published by Sir Walter Scott in 1808. Dearing, who was passionate about his subject and considered Dryden largely responsible for the evolution of modern English grammar, eventually became the project's editor-in-chief and worked on the last four volumes, completed in 2002, by himself. While working on the Dryden series, Dearing honed his skills on how to select authoritative versions of old texts, and he explained his process in A Manual of Textual Analysis (1959) and Principles and Practice of Textual Analysis (1974). He also developed a computer program to aid editors in this complex work. His knowledge of computer software later led to his becoming a professor of computer applications in literature in 1963. Retiring as a professor emeritus in 1991, Dearing continued to work on the Dryden books while maintaining an office at UCLA. He was also a noted biblical scholar, a subject he taught for four decades, and was the author of The Great Physician: The Life of Jesus Christ in Light of Modern Spiritual Healing (2003).

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Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2005, p. B9.