Richard Gordon Lillard

Richard Gordon Lillard (June 3, 1909-March 19, 1990) was an American author and educator. He was an early contributor to the environmental movement in Southern California. The Richard G. Lillard Outdoor Classroom, along the Los Angeles River, is named after him.
 https://mrca.ca.gov/parks/park-listing/richard-lillard-outdoor-classroom (last visited 1-13-22)
==Early life and family==
Lillard was born in Los Angeles, California. He grew up in Sacramento, California. 
After graduating from Sacramento High School in 1926, Lillard received a B.A. in English at Stanford University (1930), an M.A. in English at the University of Montana (1931), and a Ph.D. in American Civilization at the University of Iowa in 1943. He did graduate study in American history and American literature at Harvard University (1934-35).
==Career as an Educator==
Lillard was a professor at Los Angeles City College (1933-34, 1935-42, 1949-65) and at California State University, Los Angeles (1965-76) where he was chair of the Department of English from 1971-74. He taught courses in creative writing, and specialized in Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickenson.
==Publications and Environmental Activism==
Lillard wrote on topics related to his early interest in American Civilization and his later espousal of what became known as the environmental movement. In addition to hundreds of articles and book reviews from 1932-1986 https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=lillard%2C+richard+g&so=rel https://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/yosemite_nature_notes/30/ and https://www.google.com/search?q=lillard&cof=S%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.yosemite.ca.us%2F%3BAH%3Aleft%3BBGC%3A%23ffffcc%3BLH%3A110%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.yosemite.ca.us%2Fimages%2Fyosemiteicon.png%3BLW%3A100%3BAWFID%3Adeec426bc25b8ff9%3B&sitesearch=yosemite.ca.us&sa=Search , he wrote six books, created several bibliographies, and edited some early Californian correspondence. His book, Eden in Jeopardy: Man’s Prodigal Meddling with his Environment, the Southern California Experience was an early cry for environmental consciousness. From 1972 to 1980, he continued his environmental pursuits through his bi-monthly column entitled “About Nature” for Westways Magazine, a publication of the Automobile Club of Southern California. In that column he “exposed Westways readers to the growing influence of environmentalism and charmed them with lovely descriptions of Southern California’s natural environs and the animal and plant species that [he] encountered in his travels.” 
He worked with numerous local, national, and international groups dedicated to environmental planning and activism. He was president of the Southern California chapter of the American Studies Association (1967-68), a consultant for the Seminary in Environmental Arts and Sciences, Thorne Ecological Institute, Aspen, Colorado (summers 1972-73), a member of the Board of Directors for the Victor Gruen Center for Environmental Planning Los Angeles (1978-81), and chairman of the Board of Scholars and Consultants associated with El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park (1979-80). He participated at the 211th Wilton Park Conference in West Sussex, UK (1979). He was a member of the California Water Quality Control Board, Los Angeles (1981-82). He was a of Editorial Consultants for California History and the Western History Association (1986-89), and president of the Forest History Society, Durham, North Carolina (1985-89). Journal of Forest History, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Oct., 1987), pp. 213-215. 
 
==Published Books==
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==Honors and Awards==
Lillard was given the Outstanding Professor Award by California State University, Los Angeles, in 1968.
He received the Fellows Award from the Historical Society of Southern California in 1989.https://thehssc.org/hsscawards/fellows-award/ (last visited) 1-16-22
He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for American Literature in 1945, https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/richard-g-lillard/. He was a Fullbright Lecturer in English, in 1957-58, at the University of Grenoble and the University of Aix-Marseilles. https://libraries.uark.edu/SpecialCollections/FulbrightDirectories/. He received a fellowship from the Fund for the Advancement of Education (1954-55), a Resident Scholarship from the Bellagio Study and Conference Center (1976), a Resident Scholarship from the Camargo Foundation, Cassis France (1977), and a fellowship from the Henry E Huntington Library, San Marino, California (1986).
Lillard's working papers are available at the UCLA Library. https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0489p9qp/entire_text/
Category:American authors
Category:1909 births
Category:1990 deaths