* Katharine Washburn; Co-Editor of Poetry Anthology

Katharine Washburn, 57, a translator, essayist and editor known for a poetry anthology whose contents spanned ancient times to the 20th century. Washburn was co-editor with John S. Major of “World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse From Antiquity to Our Time,” published by W.W. Norton in 1998. It expanded upon and updated a 1928 version compiled by Mark Van Doren and called “Anthology of World Poetry.” The later volume, which runs more than 1,300 pages, contains 1,600 poems, of which more than 80% have been translated from their original languages into English. Organized chronologically in eight sections, beginning with the Bronze and Iron ages, it has offerings from ancient Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian and Chinese cultures, some extending as far back as the third millennium BC. Modern contributions run from Robert Frost to Pablo Neruda. Washburn herself translated poems from classical and modern European languages, while other translations were done by such esteemed poets as Robert Bly, Richard Wilbur and Vladimir Nabokov. Washburn was also the co-editor of “Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip Mining of American Culture” and “Tongues of Angels: A Book of Sermons.” On Wednesday of an apparent heart attack at her Brooklyn, N.Y., home.