Bate Receives $3000 From Academy For Literary Work

The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters named Walter J. Bate '39, Lawrence Professor of the Humanities, winner of the $3000 Academy-Institutes Award for literary excellence and promise of future important work on Tuesday.

"It's nice--I always like to get prizes," Bate, a 1964 Pulitzer winner for a book on John Keats, said yesterday.

The seven members of the Academy chose Bate and nine other literary figures for the award, which is regarded as the country's highest honor in the field of creative arts. The winners will receive the award on May 18.

Bate, who is on sabbatical this semester, said he will use the money to help pay for a research trip to England scheduled later this month.

He is working on a major biography of Samuel Johnson, which he expects to publish next fall and is editing the "Biographia Literaria," a collection of Coleridge's philosophy and criticism.

Bate has achieved the unusual distinction of being a three-time winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Christian Gouss Award for the best literary work. In addition, he has received two Guggenheim Fellowships and a Faculty Prize from the Harvard University Press.

Bate, who has taught at Harvard since 1946, has served as chairman of both the History and Literature Departments and the English Department.