Breadloaf School of English

The Bread Loaf School of English is the graduate school of English at Middlebury College, Vermont, United States. The School offers graduate courses in literature, creative writing, the teaching of writing, and theater. Classes are held for six weeks each summer. The School awards two degrees. Each year, approximately 90 students earn a Master of Arts (M.A.) and 5 or fewer students earn a Master of Letters (M.Litt), for which an M.A. is a prerequisite. Each degree can be completed in four to five intensive summers spread over different campuses.

The School was established in 1920 at the College's mountain campus in Ripton, Vermont near Bread Loaf Mountain and has since expanded to campuses at Lincoln College at the University of Oxford, St. John's College in New Mexico, and the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Around 80% of students are middle school and high school teachers. The student-to-faculty ratio is 10:1.

In 1915, the first of the Middlebury Language Schools was founded. As the German School and, subsequently, other Language Schools were founded, Middlebury decided to begin a similar school for the teaching of English literature. The Bread Loaf School of English was established in 1920.

Poet Robert Frost was involved in the first half-century of the Bread Loaf School. He purchased a 150-acre farm in the immediate vicinity (now owned by Middlebury College and known as the Robert Frost Farm) and subsequently spent more than 40 summers lecturing at the School.

In addition to Robert Frost, prominent faculty and staff have included William Carlos Williams, Bernard DeVoto, Edward Weismiller, Theodore Roethke, John Crowe Ransom, Elizabeth Drew, A. Bartlett Giamatti, Perry Miller, Catherine Drinker Bowen, Carlos Baker, Harold Bloom, Cleanth Brooks, Charles Edward Eaton, Richard Ellmann, Paul Muldoon, William Sloane, John Ciardi, John P. Marquand, Wylie Sypher, and Dixie Goswami.

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