Deirdre Bair (C’57), former associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, died April 17 from a heart ailment. She was 84.

She was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957 with a degree in English. She worked as a freelance writer for Newsweek magazine and The New Haven Register. She then went on to receive her master’s and PhD in comparative literature from Columbia University in 1968 and 1972, respectively. 

Dr. Bair was hired in 1976 by Penn as an assistant professor in the English department and was promoted to associate professor in 1978. While at Penn, she wrote her first book, a biography of the elusive Samuel Beckett. Beckett: A Biography (1981) earned her an American Book Award (Almanac May 5, 1981), making her the first person from Penn to win the award. Her next project was a biography of Simone de Beauvoir. She won both a Guggenheim Fellowship and Rockefeller Award in 1985 (Almanac April 16, 1985). She served on the Faculty Senate’s Committee on the Faculty and the Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Committee. She left Penn in 1988 to become a full-time researcher and writer. 

Dr. Bair went on to publish biographies of Anaïs Nin (1995), Carl Jung (2003), Saul Steinberg (2012) and Al Capone (2016). She also wrote Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over (2007). She published her memoir, Parisian Lives, in 2019.  

She is survived by her children, Katney and Vonn Scott; a sister, Linda Rankin; a brother, Vince Bartolotta; and a granddaughter.