Constantinos Apostolos Patrides (1930 – September 23, 1986) was a Greek–American academic and writer, and "one of the greatest scholars of Renaissance literature of his generation."[1]
Patrides was born to Greek parents in New York City and grew up there and in Greece. During World War II, he fought with the Greek underground against the Nazi occupation. He graduated from Kenyon College in 1952 and earned a D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1957. He served in the U.S. Army between 1952 and 1954. After Oxford, he taught at UC, Berkeley until 1964 when he moved to the newly-founded University of York in England "where he rose to a chair as Professor of English and Related Literature."[1] Patrides was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960 to study English Literature.[2] In 1978 he moved to the University of Michigan where he became G.B. Harrison Professor of English in 1981 and received the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award in 1982. He was a prolific lecturer, nationally and internationally, and enormously popular with his students.
Patrides wrote many pioneering books and articles in his field which remain standard texts and he was also a masterful editor of classic English texts by Milton, Donne and Herbert.[1]
He died in 1986 at the age of 56.[1]