Biographical Note
Newman Ivey White was born in Statesville, North Carolina, in 1892. Best known as a Percy Bysshe Shelly scholar, White also conducted fieldwork in the American south, particularly of Black folk songs. He taught at Alabama Polytechnic Institute from 1915 to 1916, and from 1919 to 1948 he was a professor of English at Trinity College, which later became Duke University. He wrote several noteworthy works on Shelley, as well as An Anthology of Verse by American Negroes (1924) with Walter Clinton Jackson and American Negro Folk Songs (1928).
White received bachelors and masters degrees from Trinity College, and a masters degree and doctorate from Harvard University. He married Marie Anne Updike, also an English Department faculty member, in 1922, and both shared an interest in progressive causes such as election reform and childcare facilities. White became general editor of the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. He was an active member of several organizations, including the American Association of University Professors, Phi Beta Kappa, the American Folklore Society, and the Modern Language Association. White died while researching at Harvard in 1948.