Vinton Dearing, 84; UCLA Scholar Edited Works of Playwright Dryden

Vinton Dearing, a UCLA professor of English and a leading member of the team of scholars responsible for “The Works of John Dryden,” a 20-volume series about the 17th century English poet-playwright, which established UCLA as a center for Dryden studies, has died. He was 84.

Dearing died April 6 in Santa Monica after a brief illness, his son, Henry, said this week. The family did not release the cause of death.

Dearing got involved in the massive Dryden project in 1949 as a junior member of the UCLA faculty. By the time the last volume was completed in 2002 when he was in his 80s, he was the project’s editor-in-chief.

The work updated an 18-volume series on the same subject that was published in 1808 by Sir Walter Scott, best known for his historical novel “Ivanhoe.”

The “California Dryden” as it became known, is the most complete collection of Dryden’s works in existence, said Alan Roper, one of about 18 scholars who contributed to the project over the years. It includes the full text of all Dryden’s poems, plays and prose. Scott abbreviated some works and left out others, Roper said.

The new edition also includes extensive, modern commentaries and expanded annotation, said Roper, a retired professor of English at UCLA.

Dearing joined the group as a text editor, helping to identify the most authoritative version of each poem and prose piece from among existing early versions.

In “A Manual of Textual Analysis” (1959), he explained the technical process he used to select an original manuscript. He updated his book in 1974 and developed a computer program that flags the variations among similar texts, which is one painstaking step in analyzing them.

For the last years of the Dryden project, Dearing was the sole editor. He did fundraising as well as editing and writing commentary for the final four volumes.

“He said he’d made a commitment and he’d see it through,” Roper recalled.

Dearing once explained his interest in Dryden. More than a poet and playwright, he was the man who standardized the sentence structure of written English.

In the 17th century, some scholars, including the poet John Milton, argued that written English ought to imitate Latin, with the verb at the end of the sentence.

“Dryden thought that written English ought to do what spoken English did: begin a sentence with its subject followed by the verb and the object,” Dearing told The Times in 2002. “As far as I’m concerned, he was the source of how we write prose today.”

Dearing was also a biblical scholar who taught “The Bible as Literature” at UCLA for about 40 years. He wrote several books on the subject, including “The Great Physician: The Life of Jesus Christ in Light of Modern Spiritual Healing” (2003).

Born July 20, 1920, in San Francisco, Dearing entered Harvard College as a freshman at age 15. He graduated in 1940 and served in the Army during World War II as an instructor at an anti-aircraft artillery school. He returned to Harvard in 1946 and earned a doctorate in 1949.

During his years on the faculty of UCLA, Dearing earned a Guggenheim and a Fulbright fellowship. He retired in 1991, became a professor emeritus and maintained an office on campus until his death.

In addition to his son, Dearing is survived by his wife, Marion; a daughter, Mary; and three grandchildren.

Contributions in his name can be made to Design for Sharing, UCLA Performing Arts, B100 Royce Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1529, or to 28th Church of Christ, 1018 Hilgard Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024.