Mary, Viscountess Eccles

Mary, Viscountess Eccles (Mary Morley Crapo Hyde Eccles) will be awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Viscountess Eccles is an English scholar with family roots in New Bedford. A writer, collector and preservationist, Viscountess Eccles received her A.B. from Vassar and her M.A, and Ph.D. from Columbia. Her publications include Playwriting for Elizabethans (1949); Samuel Johnson: Diaries, Prayers and Annals (1958); The Impossible Friendship: Boswell and Mrs. Thrale (1972); Bernard Shaw and Alfred Douglas: a Correspondence (1982); The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Vols. I-V (1992-94) and James Boswell's Book of Company at Auchinleck,1782-1795 (1995). Viscountess Eccles' collections on Johnson, Boswell, the Thrales, Bernard Shaw and Alfred Douglas are considered among the foremost in private hands. A member of the Johnson Society, the Boswell Society, the Grolier Club and the Royal Society of the Arts, she divides her time between London and New Jersey, where she is active in farmland preservation.