Robert Bagg grew up in Millburn, New Jersey, where he played JV football & was captain of the golf team, graduated from Amherst College in 1957, and spent the next two years in France and Italy on fellowships, studying and writing poetry. His Madonna of the Cello: Poems, published in 1961, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. After earning a Ph.D. in English at the University of Connecticut, he taught literature at the Universities of Washington (1963-65) and Massachusetts (1965-96) where he served as English Department Chair (1986-92). His translations of Euripides The Bakkhai and Hippolytos have been widely staged. The Complete Plays of Sophocles by Bagg & James Scully will be published in 2011 by HarperCollins. Bagg has held Prix de Rome, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, NEA & NEH fellowships, the later for a biography of Richard Wilbur.

Contact Author