13 Facts About Richard Mitchell

Richard Mitchell was a professor, first of English and later of classics, at Glassboro State College in Glassboro, New Jersey.

Richard Mitchell gained fame in the late-1970s as the founder and publisher of The Underground Grammarian, a newsletter of opinion and criticism that ran until 1992, and wrote four books expounding his views on the relationships among language, education, and ethics.

Richard Mitchell was born in Brooklyn and spent his early life in Scarsdale, New York.

Richard Mitchell attended the University of Chicago briefly, where he met his wife, Francis, and spent the balance of his undergraduate years at the University of the South, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

Richard Mitchell first gained prominence as the writer, publisher, and printer of The Underground Grammarian, a newsletter that offered lively, witty, satiric, and often derisive essays on the misuse of the English language, particularly the misuse of written English on college campuses.

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Richard Mitchell went on to publish four books: Less Than Words Can Say, The Graves of Academe, The Leaning Tower of Babel, and The Gift of Fire.

Richard Mitchell gave his permission that all of these works be made available on the Internet and be disseminated freely, without charge, especially to teachers for use in their classrooms.

Richard Mitchell published the four chapters he had completed in the final four issues of The Underground Grammarian.

Richard Mitchell retired in 1991, but continued to teach part-time until the fall of 2002.

Richard Mitchell died in his home of diabetes complications on December 27,2002 at the age of 73, and was survived by his wife, Francis, daughters Amanda Merritt, Felicity Myers, Sonia Armstrong and Daphne Keller, as well as five grandchildren.

Richard Mitchell did not announce to his readers that he was retiring The Underground Grammarian.

Richard Mitchell had originally submitted the title as The Worm in the Brain but his editors felt it too frightening and grisly.

Richard Mitchell said that surely I must have written columns that seemed to write themselves.