Reuel Wilson was born on December 25, 1938, in Manhattan, New York. He died on June 4, 2026, surrounded by his loving family at his home in London, Ontario, where he lived with his beloved wife Natsuko for 46 years.
Reuel Kimball Wilson was named after his father's uncle, a physician much esteemed by the family. His father Edmund Wilson was an influential literary critic, an early champion of European avant-garde and modernist expression, an active chronicler of his times, and an authority on the work of his contemporaries, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and many others. His mother, Mary McCarthy, was a pioneering novelist, memoirist, and critic. Her bestselling 1963 novel The Group became a cultural phenomenon adapted into a film by Sidney Lumet. Her memoir, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, about her upbringing and the events surrounding the sudden death of her parents during the Spanish influenza epidemic, is considered a classic of the genre and is dedicated to Reuel.
Reuel's childhood was spent between his parents in New York, Cape Cod, and Rhode Island. As a boy he attended St. Bernard's School in New York, where his cherished stepfather and lifelong friend, Bowden Broadwater, was a well-loved, eccentric mainstay. After attending St. George's School in Middletown, RI and graduating from Brooks School in North Andover, MA, he completed his undergraduate studies in Romance languages and literature, receiving an A.B. degree cum laude as a member of the Harvard College Class of 1960.
Raised in an environment shaped by engagement with literary traditions of many cultures, Reuel developed an enduring interest in multilingualism that would define his studies, his scholarly career, and larger outlook in life. In the 1960s he continued his studies of Slavic languages and literature in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley (M.A. 1963). There he studied under, and translated the work of, the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. Reuel wrote a doctoral thesis at the University of Chicago on Russian travel literature published as The Literary Travelogue: A Comparative Study with Special Relevance to Russian Literature from Fonvizin to Pushkin (Ph.D. 1971). By then, he had become fluent in Russian, Polish, and French; he would later master Spanish, in connection with his love of travel to foreign countries, especially Cuba and Mexico, and his intense curiosity for the contemporary literature emerging from the Spanish-speaking world.
Reuel taught Polish at UCLA for some years before he moved to Canada in 1970, with his first wife, Marcia, and joined the faculty of the Slavic Languages and Literatures department at the University of Western Ontario. There he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in language, in comparative literature, and in Russian and Polish literature (in the original languages). As a professor, Reuel mentored many students, published articles and book reviews, and another book, with Jan Pachonski, Poland's Caribbean Tragedy: A Study of the Polish Legions in the Haitian War of Independence, 1802-1803. It concerns Haiti's war of independence and Napoleon Bonaparte's plan to have his generals conscript the Polish into the war to reintroduce slavery into Saint-Domingue, then the wealthiest colony of France.
After retiring in 2002 he published two memoirs: To the Life of the Silver Harbor: Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy on Cape Cod (2008), which revisits moments from his childhood and the works of his parents linked to the landscape to which he held a strong attachment; and Holding the Road: Away from Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy (2019), where he offers vivid portraits of figures from his past, such as Hannah Arendt, Peggy Guggenheim, and his dear uncle, the actor Kevin McCarthy, best known from his leading role in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie.
Reuel continued to travel widely to foreign countries, to spend time in spring and fall in Wellfleet, Cape Cod, and to take pleasure in his various interests, which included cooking, barbequing in summer, gardening, and reading books, newspapers and journals in various languages. He remained close with former colleagues and friends and enjoyed hosting dinners. Eschewing fuss of any kind, Reuel appreciated the straightforward beauty of simplicity in nature, art, music, and friendship. His dry sense of humor and allergy to convention remained intact. His vivid memory of both historical events and of the details of his own and others' personal pasts never faded. Reuel continued to play squash into his seventies and to enjoy bike riding, swimming and exploring new places by car and on foot for many years afterward. An adventurous traveler quick to pick up the local dialects and idioms of the languages he came to know, he ventured off the beaten path to places such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Russia, Poland, and Portugal before the swell of mass tourism.
He was a devoted husband, father and grandfather, generous in sharing his love of nature and knowledge of the world with his family.
He is survived by many family members, and dearly missed and survived by his wife, Natsuko, his children, Jay (and his wife, Sandra) of Vaughn, Ontario and Sophia (and her husband, Benjamin) of Concord, MA, and his grandchildren: Alessia, Guilianna, and Theodore.
Slightly modified version of the obituary published on June 22, 2026, in the London Free Press.
