The highlight of Roth’s undergraduate career was “The Seminar”—Martin’s two-semester, invitation-only honors course that covered the entirety of English literature “from its beginnings to the present,” or from Beowulf to Stephen Spender, as things stood then. For nine credit hours per semester (the equivalent of three regular courses) the workload was immense: Students had to read one or two books a week, as well as fifty pages in Albert Baugh’s Literary History of England, an underlined copy of which Roth would forever keep on the library table of his Connecticut living room.
