Rice mourns Professor Emeritus William Piper

William Bowman Piper, former professor in the Department of English, died Oct. 14 at his home in Houston. He was 90 years old.

William Piper, at left, with fellow English professors Susan Gillman and Meredith Skura. (“English Department faculty members Piper, Gillman, Skura, Rice University.” (1983) Rice University)

A Kentucky native, Piper received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1951, a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1952 and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1958. Piper arrived at Rice in 1969 as an English professor, teaching 18th-century British literature for the final 30 years of his career.

Prior to his time at Rice, Piper taught at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University), the University of Louisville and Cornell University. Piper retired from Rice and was named Professor Emeritus in 1999.

A devoted proponent of “good English,” Piper also taught freshman and upper-level composition. His classes were popular among undergraduates, as evidenced by a 1986 issue of The Thresher in which an evaluation survey noted that “William Piper’s ENGL 315 was the only course to receive perfect ones for effectiveness and overall course with a high response rate.”

Piper was equally well-regarded by his graduate students, whom he routinely encouraged to submit papers to conferences and journals. To further inspire them, Piper founded a graduate symposium at which students and faculty could present papers.

Much like his colleague and fellow Shakespeare aficionado Dennis Huston, who joined the English department at the same time, Piper’s stage at Rice was primarily the classroom. Yet he did once venture out onto a more public platform in 1978, performing the role of Holofernes in a Baker Shakespeare production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost.”

Piper also published several books, among them the seminal “The Heroic Couplet,” a treatment of Laurence Sterne, “Immaterialist Aesthetics,” “Common Courtesy in Eighteenth-Century Literature” and “Reconcilable Differences in Eighteenth-Century English Literature.” Countless articles and reviews are part of his corpus. In his later years, he wrote a series of children’s books titled “Giraffe of Montana,” taken from stories he told his step-daughter.

Piper is survived by his wife, Faye E. Walker; his first wife and dear friend, Katharine Welles Piper; brothers Robert, David and George Piper; children Henry, Walter, Anthony, Anne and Isabel; and four grandchildren.

Piper will be remembered at a memorial service at his home and will be interred at Lexington Cemetery in Kentucky.