Joyce S. Adler (1915–1999)

Joyce S. Adler was born in New York City, the daughter of Louis and Lillian Lifshutz. She received a bachelor's degree cum laude from Brooklyn College in 1935, followed by a master's degree in 1951. She married Max Sparer, with whom she had two daughters before divorcing.

She became an English teacher in the NYC public schools and was active in the teachers' union. In 1954, she resigned from her teaching position and then held a number of jobs, including writing television screenplays and editing for the journal Blood from the American Society of Hematology.

In 1963, she traveled to Georgetown, Guyana as a member of a small group engaged to conduct seminars for teachers, after which she become a founding member of the faculty of the University of Guyana. She stayed in the country for five years. While there, she wrote a book, Attitudes Towards Race in Guyanese Literature (1968). She became a friend of many Guyanese political figures, including Cheddi Jagan and Janet Rosenberg Jagan, each of whom later served as president.
She became especially interested in the work of Guyanese author Wilson Harris, becoming one of the leading authorities on his work. Her many writings about Harris, originally published in a variety of journals, were published posthumously in book form as Exploring the Palace of the Peacock: Essays on Wilson Harris (2003).
In 1968, she returned to the USA after marrying mathematician and author Irving Adler, and lived in Shaftsbury, Vermont.
During this phase of her life, she wrote important critical analyses and other works on Herman Melville. Her book War in Melville's Imagination was published in 1981.

She adapted three Melville novels as plays, published as the book Dramatizations of Three Melville Novels, with an Introduction on Interpretation by Dramatization (1992). Her play Melville, Billy and Mars, a dramatization of Billy Budd, premiered at the University of Kansas in 1995. Her dramatization of Moby-Dick received its first dramatic reading at the 2003 international meeting of the Melville Society in Kahului, Hawaii. Her stage version of Benito Cereno was first produced at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts in 2005.
In addition, she served as president of the Melville Society in 1988.
Adler traveled extensively, speaking at conferences and universities around the world.
She also was a committed social activist who engaged in many peace and civil rights movements throughout her life.