The University of Western Ontario is saddened by the loss of former English professor and celebrated Milton scholar Balachandra Rajan.
Rajan, who taught in the Department of English for 19 years and retired in 1985, died on Jan. 23.
He was known for devoting his life to literature – having written one of the most influential books of Milton criticism, Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth-Century Reader – and public service in his native India.
Rajan, 89, was named an Honored Scholar of the Milton Society of America and was a Fellow and Medalist of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2006, a collection of Rajan essays, Milton and the Climate of Reading, won the Milton Society of America’s Irene Samuel Memorial Award.
He was also a known expert on the Romantics, T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound and literary theory and authored two novels.
A memorial service for Rajan will be held at Western at a later date.