My buddy Tom Mason, who has died aged 74, was a senior lecturer in English on the University of Bristol and an creator of books and essays on literature. He and I collaborated on two books, Chosen Poems of Abraham Cowley (1994), and Chaucer within the Eighteenth Century (2022), and he additionally wrote chapters for multi-authored editions, together with The Oxford Historical past of Literary Translation, Vol 3 (2005) and John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays (2000).
Tom was born in Basel in Switzerland throughout a interval when his father, Harold, a tutorial, was working there. His mom, Eva (nee Vest), was Swiss, and each dad and mom finally turned academics at Cambridge College; his father specialising in English literature and his mom in German. When the household moved to Britain shortly after the second world warfare, Tom was educated at Hele’s faculty in Exeter and the Perse faculty in Cambridge earlier than going to Lincoln School, Oxford, the place he obtained a primary in English, and Trinity School, Cambridge, the place he accomplished his PhD in 1976.
He labored as a contract supervisor at numerous Cambridge faculties till in 1979 he was appointed to a lectureship in English at Bristol, and remained there for the remainder of his profession.
The college significantly valued him as a researcher, tutor and administrator. His instructing, significantly of his specialist topics of poetry and comedy and John Milton’s Paradise Misplaced, was extraordinarily standard with college students. He was additionally a resourceful and dedicated PhD supervisor and his printed work, primarily on seventeenth and 18th-century poetry, was distinctive and authentic.
He retired in 2013, however carried on as a part-time trainer of MA items on Shakespeare and English poetry. In any other case he indulged his pursuits in classical music, gardening and feeding the backyard birds, and setting up an limitless mannequin railway together with his neighbours’ kids.
Tom was brilliantly insightful about books and life. He didn’t miss something about anyone. However whereas a capability to “look fairly by way of the deeds of males” can lead some to cynicism or vanity, he was at all times benign, open-minded, good-humoured, courteous, beneficiant, modest and forgiving. He was additionally significantly beloved by kids.
In 1992 he married the writer and trainer Catherine Bradley. She survives him together with their kids, Eva and Sam; a son, Jack, from his first marriage, to Maggie Medhurst, which resulted in divorce; a daughter, Annie, from his second marriage, to Sarah Machon, which additionally resulted in divorce; by his grandchildren Josie and Ben; and his brother John. His different brother, Charles Mason, died in 2013.
from Academic Essays – My Blog https://ift.tt/SvD3beO
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment