Hershel Parker: key obituary facts
Is Hershel Parker dead? Yes. Hershel Parker died on June 19, 2026, at age 90.
Cause of death: Hershel Parker's cause of death has not been publicly confirmed.
What was Hershel Parker known for?
He was an American professor of English and literature.
More about Hershel Parker
Born: 26 November 1935.
Place of birth: Comanche.
Gender: male.
Occupation: literary historian, Americanist, literary scholar.
Nationality: United States.
Education: Lamar University.
Employer: University of Delaware.
Awards: Guggenheim Fellowship.
Hershel Parker, an American literary historian and scholar of Herman Melville, died on June 19, 2026.
He was 90. Born in Comanche, Oklahoma, on November 26, 1935, Parker was an American professor of English and literature and the H.
Fletcher Brown Professor Emeritus at the University of Delaware. His scholarship centered on Melville, including co-editing the Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick with Harrison Hayford and serving as general editor of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, completed in fifteen volumes in 2017. He also wrote a two-volume biography of Melville and edited Herman Melville: Complete Poems, the first one-volume edition of the author’s complete poetry, published in 2019.