Marvin Leonard Colker
University of Virginia
March 19, 1927--April 8, 2020
Tribute by John Miller
Marvin Colker, our emeritus colleague in Classics at the University of Virginia, passed away three nights ago in Charlottesville, just three weeks after his 93rd birthday. Marvin spent his entire long career at UVA (1953–98), and worked nearly every summer in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. His research centered on palaeography and textual criticism in the medieval period. Among Marvin’s long list of distinguished publications are a critical edition of Walter of Chatillon’s epic Alexandreis; Analecta Dublinensia: Three Medieval Latin Texts in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin; and America Rediscovered in the Thirteenth Century. In the course of compiling his magisterial two-volume catalog of the medieval and Renaissance manuscripts at TCD, he rediscovered numerous works. Trinity awarded Marvin an honorary Doctor of Letters in 1987.