Robert Bloom

Robert Bloom, a scholar of British and American literature, died July 15, 2023, in San Leandro, California at the age of 93.

Born May 28, 1930, in Brooklyn, NY, Bloom attended the Washington Heights campus of New York University where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in English literature in 1951. He completed a masters in British and American literature at Columbia University before serving as lieutenant junior grade in the United States Coast Guard for two years.

Upon completion of his PhD at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, he was hired by the UC Berkeley English Department where he taught from 1960-1992, except for 1963-1964 when he was the Bruern Fellow in American Civilization at the University of Leeds. He was a distinguished actor in the UC Drama Section from 1960-2018, a longstanding member of the Committee for Arts and Lectures, and a devoted cyclist who rode from his home in North Berkeley to Inspiration Point and back several times a week into his eighties. He was also an accomplished classical and jazz pianist, avocations shared by his family: one colleague recalls that “the musical Blooms” were “legendary.”

He is remembered by colleagues as especially open, friendly and welcoming to new arrivals in the English department. As a teacher, he rejected overly theoretical readings of literature he loved, in favor of letting the books themselves “work their magic on each new generation,” as one colleague put it. 

He was a dedicated scholar as well as teacher. In addition to his books on Joyce Cary and H. G. Wells – The Indeterminate World: A Study of the Novels of Joyce Cary (1962) and Anatomies of Egotism: A Reading of the Last Novels of H.G. Wells (1977) – he published many articles in major literary journals, including several on W. H. Auden’s poetry, one of which Auden himself praised.

He is survived by his wife Gloria and their three children, Claudia, Jonathan, and Madeline.

Jonathan Bloom (son)
Margaret Chowning
Eric Falci