William Terry Couch

William Terry Couch (1901–1989) was a U.S. intellectual and academic editor, known primarily for his work as director of the University of Chicago Press in the 1940s, and his work as Editor in Chief of Collier's Encyclopedia in the 1950s and 1960s. He also wrote and commented extensively on encyclopedias, their organization and role in modern society and academia. Friends, family and colleagues knew him as Bill Couch.

Biography

Couch was born in Pamplin City, Virginia in 1901. He was raised in Virginia and North Carolina and settled in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1910 (?). He attended the University of North Carolina and after brief military service immediately following World War I, returned to Chapel Hill to work for the University of North Carolina Press where he rose to be the director of the press and therefore a member of the university faculty. His brother, John Couch was also a member of the University of North Carolina Biology Department faculty. In 1943 (?), Couch was hired by the University of Chicago to direct its press under then Chancellor Robert Maynard Hutchins. He was subsequently dismissed from that position in 1949 after a significant public academic controversy over the publication of Morton Grodzin's book Americans Betrayed. Couch had published the book after refusing Hutchins's request to suppress the manuscript.^[1] He subsequently was hired as Editor and Chief of Collier's Encyclopedia, a position he held until 1969 (?) when he retired and moved back to Chapel Hill.

Couch married Elizabeth Calvert in 1925 (?) and had two children, Elizabeth and Jane.

He died in 1989 in Charlottesville, Virginia after a prolonged illness.

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