"Proving Contraries": A Collection of Writings in Honor of Eugene England

Eugene England, the late Professor of English at Brigham Young University, died in 2001 before completing the Reader’s Book of Mormon project, which he initiated. He was a co-founder of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, author of six books (see Making Peace), editor of seven anthologies, and a contributor to sixteen volumes. He published some 150 articles in professional journals and magazines during his lifetime. He received his Ph.D. at Stanford University and taught at St. Olaf College in Minnesota before joining the faculty at Brigham Young University. At BYU, where he taught for two decades, he was alternately chair of the Department of English, director of the Honors Program, and director of the Theater Study Abroad program. After retiring from BYU in 1998, he joined the faculty at Utah Valley State in Orem, Utah, as a Writer-in-Residence, where he helped initiate a Mormon Studies program. In 2001 he was diagnosed with brain cancer and died August 17.


This festschrift honoring Eugene England was begun several years before his passing, even before the illness which ravaged his mind and his body. It was my expectation to present the collection to him on an occasion when his life’s work would be celebrated by those who admired, respected, and loved him. The initial impulse to honor him and his work came during a period when Gene was depressed over the way he had been treated by administration and faculty at Brigham Young University. As was his inclination, he questioned his own motives and behavior when others were critical of him, yet in spite of his efforts to make peace with his detractors and to negotiate a graceful exit from the university, he was still treated in ways he did not deserve. I thought, therefore, that a tribute validating his enormous contribution not only to Mormon culture but to the lives of thousands of students and others might be an anodyne to the depression and self-doubt he was experiencing.

 Robert A. Rees is a poet, literary critic, and scholar of Mormon studies who has taught at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz. Rees presently teaches Mormon Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He is the author of many books and articles, including Fifteen American Authors before 1900, “Proving Contraries”: A Collection of Writings in Honor of Eugene England, and The Reader’s Book of Mormon. He is the producer of two public television documentaries: The Golden Angel over the City and Spires to the Sun: Rodia’s Towers in Watts.