Richard C. Marius, the former director of Harvard's Expository Writing program, a Reformation scholar and an acclaimed novelist, died at his home in Belmont on Friday from pancreatic cancer. He was 66.

Marius became Harvard's director of Expository Writing in 1978 and served until 1993, when he resigned to devote more time to teaching and his own writing.

Faculty and students remember Marius as a devoted teacher and "Southern gentleman," who loved writing. He retired from Harvard last year after becoming sick in order to finish his fourth novel, which is scheduled for publication next year.

His other novels, The Coming of the Rain (1969), Bound for the Promised Land (1976) and After the War (1992), portray individuals interacting with major historical events between 1850 and 1950. They are all set in Marius's native Tennessee.

"He never really got that time to write that he planned for," said Marius's wife, Lanier Smythe. "As an academic he would have done the academic work no matter what. No one required him to do the creative work. That's what he did because he loved it."

As an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee, Marius wrote a weekly column with sketches of many of the characters who later appeared in his novels.

He received a B.S. in journalism in 1954, then a B.D. from the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky in 1958. Marius then traveled to Strasbourg, France as a Rotary Fellow.

Marius' love of France drew him there for summer bike trips for the rest of his life.