LONG, EUGENE HUDSON (1908-1990). E. Hudson Long, professor of English and American studies, son of Eugene Hugh and Cora Lee (Hudson) Long, was born in Waco, Texas, on November 4, 1908. He attended Waco public schools and earned both bachelor's and master's degrees at Baylor University in 1931, after which he studied at the University of Virginia (1933-34), Oxford University (1935), and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D., 1942). His doctoral dissertation was on O. Henry (see PORTER, WILLIAM S.). From 1937 to 1941 Long taught English at Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) and in 1941-42 at the University of Delaware. During World War IIqv he served in the United States Army as assistant historian for the combined chiefs of staff in Washington. After the war he returned to the University of Pennsylvania to teach, in 1945-46. He also taught at Ohio State University in 1946-47 and from then until 1949 at Vanderbilt University. He taught at Baylor University from 1949 until his retirement in 1976, serving in various capacities, including chairman and distinguished professor of English (1973-76) and cochairman of the American Civilization Program, the latter honor granted in 1973.
Long was invited to Baylor to head the American Civilization Program. He was a founder and the first president of the American Studies Association of Texas. He hosted the first meeting of ASAT in Waco in 1956. Among his favorite courses was one on American humor. He was an active member of the Texas Folklore Societyqv and many other professional organizations, a devoted Democrat, and a Methodist.
His publications included O. Henry, the Man and His Work (1949), O. Henry: American Regionalist (1969), Mark Twain Handbook (1958), and American Drama: A Bibliography (1970). He edited works by Stephen Crane, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Tolstoy. The textbook he edited with others, The American Tradition in Literature (first issued in 1956), was at one time used in some 900 colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. He contributed articles to the Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book Encyclopedia, and various professional journals. A festschrift for him containing chapters by colleagues and former students, American Bypaths, edited by Robert G. Collmer and Jack W. Herring, was published in 1980. On July 3, 1936, Long married Martha Stephenson Crawford. He died on August 29, 1990, and was buried at Lorena, Texas.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Who's Who in America, 1980-81.
Robert G. Collmer
