Peter A. Lindenbaum

Peter A. Lindenbaum, of Bloomington, Indiana and London, England, died at his Bloomington home on January 20, 2010, after a long battle with cancer. He was 71.

Born in New York City, he was educated at Harvard College, the University of Cambridge, and the University of California at Berkeley. From 1967-2003, he taught at Indiana University, where he was a professor of English and a founder of the History of the Book and Renaissance Studies programs.

His published work focused on the poet John Milton and, more recently, on writers� contracts and the construction of reading audiences in the seventeenth-century book trade, on which he wrote a series of seminal articles. He also had a special interest in modern libraries of rare books. At Indiana, he was active in faculty governance and the recruitment of graduate students, while always sustaining a deep commitment to undergraduate teaching.

After retirement, he lived in London, where he enjoyed affiliations with the University of London at the Institute for English Studies and Royal Holloway College. In the course of his career, he held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Folger Library, the Bibliographical Societies of Great Britain and America, and the Mellon Foundation.

He is survived by his wife Sheila, his son John, his daughter-in-law Sarah Reed, and his parents-in-law Joseph and Wanda Serio. Memorial contributions can be made to the Lilly Library at Indiana University or to the Neely House , a residence for cancer patients and their families in Boston MA.