Horace Edward Thorner (1909-1981) taught English at Williston Academy from 1943 to 1970, and served as the school’s Librarian. For ten years prior to coming to Williston, he was a practicing psychologist. Such bald biographical data insufficiently describes a multifaceted scholar, collector of and dealer in rare books, antiques, and atrocious puns, coach of the Williston Chess Team, and, simply, a fine teacher.
A prolific author, Thorner’s writings include verse translations of Homer’s Iliad and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a play, The Man Who Shot God, many works of criticism and history, and several volumes of poetry. He is unique among our faculty for having been an elected fellow of both the Royal Society of London and the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
In 1965-66 Thorner, on sabbatical from Williston, traveled around the world. To supplement, or perhaps supersede, his camera, he carried a notebook in which he recorded his impressions in verse. These he collected in The Round World Squared (Hawthorne Publications, 1979). In the introduction he commented, “Each of the poems was written on the spot at the time, proving nothing more, perhaps, than that a man like me does well to keep on moving.”