Nicolas Karl Kiessling died Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024. Nick was born in Watertown, Wis., on Sept. 6, 1936, to Elmer Carl Kiessling (1895-1981) and Esther Brockman Kiessling (1906-2006). He attended a local parochial elementary and high school and graduated from Northwestern College in Watertown in 1958 with the intention of becoming a Lutheran minister. Because he was not certain about his future, he took a teaching job at a new Lutheran high school in Fort Atkinson, Wis. After one year of that he knew high school teaching was not for him, so he enrolled in a history program at the University of Wisconsin and earned a Master of Arts degree under the direction of the William Appleman Williams, an historian of American diplomatic history. After one year he returned to the Lutheran seminary but that convinced him that the ministry was not for him.
His Master of Arts at the University of Wisconsin qualified him to teach at Concordia College in River Forest in the Department of English in 1961-62. While there he took Karen Ann Harris out on a blind date. It brought out a few disagreements and Karen determined that if he ever called again, she would have the pleasure of turning him down. But two weeks later Nick tempted her with tickets to Tennessee Williams’ play, “The Night of the Iguana,” with Bette Davis, at the Blackstone Theater in downtown Chicago. This date was more successful and it led to their marriage in 1963 in Karen’s home town, Pocatello.
Nick was then a graduate student in English at the University of Wisconsin, and he received his Ph.D. in 1967, under the direction of Frederic Cassidy, the editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English. The sojourn in Madison was made easier by Karen’s teaching job in Monona, Wis. In 1967 he was recruited by Emmet Avery, then the chairperson of the English Department at Washington State University, and they moved to Pullman where he taught for 33 years before his retirement in 2000. His teaching at WSU covered a wide range of courses both on the undergraduate and graduate level, from the Bible as literature to Old Norse, Beowulf, Chaucer and Shakespeare.
From 1980 his research life was centered in Oxford, England, where all the materials for his publications were located. His collaboration with John Bamborough, the principal at Linacre College, led to his appointment as a senior visiting member in 1983. This appointment made his many excursions to Oxford pleasurable and productive. His name is on the title pages of eight books, seven of which were published in Oxford: a three-volume Oxford University Press edition of Robert Burton’s “The Anatomy of Melancholy”; Oxford Bibliographical Society volumes on the libraries of Robert Burton and of Anthony à Wood; and Bodleian Library publications on the same two figures, Robert Burton and Anthony à Wood. It gave him some satisfaction that none of these publications has been superseded while he was yet alive.
Scholarly contributions continued to the end. An article on how some 20,000 English recusant books found their way from English Catholic colleges, priories and monasteries to major research institutions in the United States, appeared in 2016 in The Catholic Historical Review and was awarded a prize for the best article on book history in 2017. His last work, a descriptive index of some 6000 topological references in Burton’s “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” appeared in the Christ Church Newsletter in 2023.
Upon retirement in August 2000, he and Karen noticed that a mini-recession threatened to create financial problems for them. Fortunately opportunities fell in place over the next several years. In 2001 he taught at Université de Haute Bretagne in Rennes, Brittany, where he had also taught in 1993-94. In 2003-04 he received a Fulbright grant to teach at the Université Hassan II in Casablanca, Morocco, and the following year, 2004-05, he received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for study in Oxford. His wife, Karen, has been a delightful and supportive partner during their 61 years of marriage and an invaluable contributor to his research projects, reading and commenting on virtually every page of his work. When in Rennes, she lightened his teaching by taking over classes for him. Those shared teaching duties continued in Morocco.
His life was not all teaching and research. He spent almost every noon hour in the WSU gyms, moving from more to less rigorous sports over his last 50 years: basketball, handball, tennis, racquetball, pickleball to ping pong. He more than once said that these activities offered moments of sanity away from work at the office. During summers, through the generosity of Emmet and Mary Avery, and later their grandson Brad Steiner, the Avery/Steiner cottage at Priest Lake offered marvelous opportunities to sail, kayak and hike. This pattern began in 1972 and continued for many years. After retirement, theological and philosophical discussions at Rico’s, with congenial Pullman colleagues and friends, kept him from worse diversions.
Nick is survived by his wife, Karen Ann Harris Kiessling, one son, Mark Andrew, and a sister, Karen Pautz, of Wind Lake, Wis. A younger son, Daniel Paul, died in 2024, and a younger brother, Paul, died in 1972. At Nick’s request there will be no funeral service. Gifts in his memory may be made to the Nicolas K. and Karen H. Kiessling Endowment administered by the Washington State University Foundation. It provides funds for students in the Department of English who are interested in study in a foreign country.
Corbeill Funeral Homes of Pullman is in charge of arrangements. Online condolences may be made at corbeillfuneralhomes.com.
