Peter Edgerly Firchow (December 16, 1937 – October 18, 2008) was an American literary scholar and educator. He wrote extensively on the relationship betweenBritish andGerman literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he was a leading scholar of theBritish writerAldous Huxley. He served as a faculty member in theUniversity of Minnesota English Department from 1967 to 2008 and as director of the university'sComparative Literature program from 1972 to 1978.^[1][2][3]

Peter Firchow was born December 16, 1937, inNeedham,Massachusetts, United States, to aGerman father andCosta Rican mother. He eventually became fluent in English, Spanish, and German. In 1942, duringWorld War II, Firchow's father was deported from the USA as a hostile alien, and the family followed him to Germany. The entire family returned to the USA in 1949 and settled inCambridge, Massachusetts, where Firchow attendedCambridge Latin High School.^[4]

Firchow received B.A. and M.A. degrees inEnglish literature atHarvard University and a Ph.D. in English from theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison in 1965, writing his dissertation on Aldous Huxley.^[5] He wrote or edited nine books and translated three from German to English. He also wrote over 50 articles and over 70 reviews.^[6]

Gerald Gillespie described two of Firchow's books as "great achievements in comparative literary studies":The Death of the German Cousin: Variations on a Literary Stereotype, 1890-1920, andStrange Meetings: Anglo- German Literary Encounters from 1910 to 1950.^[7] The latter was published just weeks before his death.

Firchow's wife, Evelyn S. Firchow, also a professor at the University of Minnesota, was a philologist and scholar of medieval German literature.^[8] She edited a collection of Firchow's essays,Reluctant Modernists: Aldous Huxley and Some Contemporaries. After his death Firchow was honored in a special edition of theAldous Huxley Annual, which included an evaluation of his criticism and announced the establishment of the "Peter Edgerly Firchow Memorial Essay Prize in Aldous Huxley Studies."^[9]

• Friedrich Schlegel's "Lucinde" and the Fragments. Ed. and Trans. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1971.
• Aldous Huxley: Satirist and Novelist. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1972.
• The Writer's Place: Interviews on the Literary Situation in Contemporary Britain. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1971
• East German Short Stories: An Introductory Anthology. Ed. and Trans. with Evelyn S. Firchow. Boston: Twayne, 1979.
• The End of Utopia: A Study of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1984.
• The Death of the German Cousin: Variations on a Literary Stereotype, 1890-1920. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1986.
• Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1999.
• The Abbey. By Alois Brandstetter. Translated by Peter and Evelyn Firchow. Afterword by Peter Firchow. Riverside: Ariadne P, 1998.
• W.H. Auden: Contexts for Poetry. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2002.
• Reluctant Modernists: Aldous Huxley and Some Contemporaries. A Collection of Essays. Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2002.
• Modern Utopian Fictions from H.G. Wells to Iris Murdoch. Washington: Catholic U of America P, 2007.
• Strange Meetings: Anglo-German Literary Encounters from 1910 to 1960. Washington: Catholic U of America P, 2008.

• "Conrad, Goethe, and the German Grotesque."Comparative Literature Studies 13 (1976): 60-73.
• "Mental Music: Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point as Novels of Ideas."Studies in the Novel 9 (1977): 518-35.
• "Faschismus und die literarische Avantgarde in England zwischen den Kriegen."Faschismus und die Avantgarde. Ed. by Reinhold Grimm and J. Hermand. Königstein: Athenäum, 1980. 35-65.
• "Sunlight in the Hofgarten: The Wasteland and pre-1914 Munich."Anglia 111 (1993): 447-58.
• "Shakespeare, Goethe, and the War of the Professors, 1914-1918."Intimate Enemies: English and German Literary Reactions to the Great War, 1914-1918. Ed. Franz K. Stanzl and Martin Löschnigg. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1993. 177-86.
• "Literary Multilingualism and Modernity: The Anglo-American Perspective."Multilinguale Literatur im 20. Jahrhundert. Ed. Manfred Schmeling and Monika Schmitz-Emans. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002. 59-67.

• Cohen, Ben (2008). "Peter Firchow, 70, U of M professor of British literature" (obituary).Star Tribune. October 30.
• Firchow, Evelyn S. Bibliography of Peter Edgerly Firchow (2002).Reluctant Modernists: Aldous Huxley and Some Contemporaries. A Collection of Essays. Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2002. pp. 301–306.
• Firchow, Peter. University of Minnesota faculty page. Accessed June 18, 2012.
• Gillespie, Gerald (2009). "In Memoriam Peter Edgerly Firchow (1937-2008)."CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 11.4 (2009).
• Haley, David (2009). "Peter Firchow: In Memoriam."University of Minnesota English Department Newsletter, Fall 2009.

• Meckier, Jerome, and Bernfried Nugel, eds.The Gedenkschrift, In Memoriam Peter Edgerly Firchow, 2009. Volume 7,Aldous Huxley Annual: A Journal of Twentieth-Century Thought and Beyond.
• Rossen, Janice. "Peter Firchow: Professor Extraordinaire."Reluctant Modernists. Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2002

• 1937 births
• 2008 deaths
• People from Needham, Massachusetts
• Harvard College alumni
• University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
• University of Minnesota faculty
• American humanities academics
• American academics of German literature
• Cambridge Rindge and Latin School alumni
• Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
• American academics of English literature