George Remington Havens (25 August 1890, Shelter Island Heights, New York – 28 September 1977, Columbus, Ohio) was an American professor of French. His publications on French literature focussed on Voltaire and Rousseau.^[1][2]

Havens graduated from Amherst College in 1913. In 1917 he received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University with thesis The Abbé Prévost and English literature^[1] (published in 1921).^[3] He married Edith Louise Curtiss (known as "Louise") on 18 July 1917 in Los Angeles. From 1917 to 1919^[4] he served as a naval officer in the United States Fleet Reserve and attained the rank of second lieutenant.^[1]

Havens was a professor of French at Ohio State University from 1919 to 1961, when he retired as professor emeritus. During various summers, he taught at a number of universities, including the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University.^[1]

He enjoyed a national and international reputation in the field of eighteenth-century French studies.^[1]

Havens made two trips to Leningrad, one in 1927 and the other in 1930, to study Voltaire's books housed in the National Library of Russia.^[2][5][6] He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1929–1930. He received honorary doctorates from Ohio State University and University of Michigan.^[1]

Havens called his wife "his first and best of readers". She survived him by about three months.^[1]

• as editor: Selections from Voltaire with explanatory comment upon his life and works, New York/London 1925, 1930; New York 1969
• Voltaire's Marginalia on the pages of Rousseau. A comparative study of ideas, Columbus 1933, reprint, New York 1966, 1971
• as editor: Voltaire, Candide, ou, L’optimisme, New York 1934, 1969
• as editor: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur les sciences et les arts, New York 1946
• as editor with Donald F. Bond: The eighteenth century, Syracuse, New York 1951 (series A critical bibliography of French literature with general editor David Clark Cabeen, vol. 4)
  • as author: Chapter VII. Voltaire pp. 182–207
• The age of ideas. From reaction to revolution in eighteenth-century France, New York 1955,^[7] 1965
• as editor with Norman L. Torrey: Voltaire's catalogue of his library at Ferney, Geneva 1959
• Frederick J. Waugh. American marine painter, Orono, Maine 1969 (See Frederick Judd Waugh.)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Boston 1978