A. Bryant Mangum

Dr. A. Bryant Mangum, known to generations of students as Bryant Mangum, was a longtime English professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and one of the leading American scholars of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He died on 13 September 2026 at the age of 83 at his home in Richmond, Virginia, surrounded by his family. No cause of death has been made public.

Mangum was born on 12 January 1943 in Monroe, North Carolina, the only child of G. C. Mangum Jr. and Alice Bryant Mangum. He spent early childhood time in the small South Carolina town of Ruby, where his mother, an English major and later a first-grade teacher, read to him constantly and where his father, a school superintendent, introduced him to writers such as Jack London and Edgar Allan Poe. He attended St. John's High School in Darlington, South Carolina, where he played football as an All-State halfback, before earning a bachelor's degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in English and American literature from the University of South Carolina in 1975, under the Fitzgerald and Hemingway scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli.

In 1971, while still completing his doctorate, Mangum joined the English faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he would remain for the rest of his working life. Over more than five decades he built a reputation as an authority on Fitzgerald and on early twentieth-century American magazine culture, particularly The New Yorker. He wrote A Fortune Yet: Money in the Art of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Short Stories and Understanding Alice Adams, and edited F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context and The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. His essays appeared in the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review and in the Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Within the department he created and for a decade directed First Friday, a recurring series of faculty presentations, directed the Master of Arts in English program, and served for years on the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing committee.

Colleagues and former students remembered not only his scholarship but his manner with people. Catherine Ingrassia, dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences, called him a compassionate teacher, a respected scholar and an exemplary university citizen. During his career he received the VCU University Distinguished Teaching Award, the Elske v.P. Smith Distinguished Lecturer Award, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award, and related teaching honors. He retired from full-time teaching in 2022 after 51 years at VCU. Shortly before his death he donated his personal papers and a large collection of rare books, including sought-after first editions of Fitzgerald's work, to the James Branch Cabell Library's Special Collections and Archives, a gift now known as the Bryant Mangum Collection.

Away from campus, Mangum was known for sailing on the Rappahannock River near Morattico in Virginia's Northern Neck and for relaxing on his solar-powered pontoon boat on Swift Creek Reservoir. He was predeceased by his parents and by his grandson, Anthony Bryant Mangum III, and is survived by his three children, Anthony Bryant (Skip) Mangum Jr., Creighton Wrenn Mangum and Dr. Charlotte Mangum Wincott, along with several grandchildren and a great-grandchild. His death was announced through a family obituary in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and drew tributes from VCU and from former students who described him as a formative influence on their lives.