Dr. Louis Crompton, An internationally noted scholar of nineteenth-century British literature and pioneer of gay studies, died at age 84 in El Cerrito, CA on July 11, 2009. Born in Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada, on April 5, 1925, he was the son of Clarence Crompton, Master Mariner, and Mabel Crompton.
He graduated from the University of Toronto with an M.A. in mathematics in 1948, and from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in English in 1954. After teaching mathematics at the University of British Columbia and English at the University of Toronto, he joined the English department at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1955, retiring in 1989. In 1959 he taught as visiting professor at the University of Chicago and in 1961 at the University of California at Berkeley. He especially enjoyed teaching graduate students and mentoring candidates for the doctorate.
His work in the early days of the gay movement has been included in a soon-to-be released documentary film, Before Homosexuals, directed by John Scagliotti. Crompton had an international reputation as a Shavian scholar. In 1966 he was awarded the Frank H. Woods Foundation Fellowship to do research on Bernard Shaw at the British Museum. His book on Shaw’s plays, Shaw the Dramatist, won him the national Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award for Literary Criticism for 1969.
In 1970 his pioneering course in gay studies at UNL, the second in the nation, became an issue in that year’s state elections; one legislator not averse to controversy introduced a bill banning the teaching about homosexuality at any state college. The bill failed. In 1974 Crompton co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Caucus of the Modern Language Association which attracted a large membership. In 1985 the University of California Press published his Byron and Greek Love which was widely and favorably reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic. His last book, Homosexuality and Civilization, published by the Harvard University Press, covered 2500 years of world history and was awarded the Bonnie Zimmerman and Vern L. Bullough prize of the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality award for 2003.
Crompton is survived by his husband, Luis Diaz-Perdomo, El Cerrito, CA; his brother Gordon Crompton, sister-in-law Marion Crompton, and his nephew Robert Crompton of St. Catharines, Ontario; and by his niece Nancy Crompton, New Westminister, British Columbia.
Memorials, which are tax deductible contributions, may be made online at www. nufoundation.org/crompton or sent to the University of Nebraska Foundation, 1010 Lincoln Mall, Ste. 300, Lincoln, NE 68508 Checks should be drawn to the University of Nebraska Foundation and directed to the Louis Crompton Scholarship Fund.
Memorial Service will be held in Lincoln, NE in early September.