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David Daiches
A Celebration of His Life and Work

Edited by William Baker and Michael Lister
William Baker is Presidential Research Professor, Department of English/ University Libraries, Northern Illinois University. He co-edits The Year’s Work in English Studies (OUP). Michael Lister is a writer and independent researcher who lives in Edinburgh. He regularly reviews works on Scottish literature for several literary journals, and has published various articles about David Daiches.

“Several essays dwell on the Scottish theme, and on the extraordinary neglect of Scottish literature which prevailed in the Cambridge of Dr Leavis and elsewhere. Daiches developed his romantic childhood response to the novels of Walter Scott and R. L. Stevenson and to the poems of Burns and the mournful ballads of Flodden into adult admiration, and was partly successful in convincing others. He loved Scott from the age of eleven when he fell for Rob Roy in a dramatized version in which the evil Rashleigh’s face glowed a corrupt green, Rob Roy himself sported a fine red beard, and the painted mountains and lochs and waterfalls of the set at the King’s Theatre gave him his first (and, he claims, quite accurate) view of the Highlands. He wrote autobiographically of his early affection for The Talisman and Ivanhoe, which he experienced as novels of religious tolerance, and in his landmark two-part article in Nineteenth Century Fiction, published in 1951, he wrote critically and appreciatively of the great Scottish novels. Scott, claims the Scott scholar and editor Andrew Hook, remained in 1950 ‘a totally neglected writer’, and Daiches’s advocacy had a considerable impact. Daiches tackled the ‘paradox of Scottish culture’ (which was the title of one of his works) from many angles, and was proud, says Hook, to have been a ‘modern pioneer in Scottish literary studies, mapping roads for others to follow’. His father was a great admirer of David Hume, the hero of the Scottish Enlightenment, and Daiches, in his tributes to Scottishness, was also paying tribute to his father.” From “A happy dualism”, Margaret Drabble, TLS

David Daiches (1912–2005) was the first Professor of English at the University of Sussex. His distinguished career over more than half a century encompassed Universities on both sides of the Atlantic. His publications were prolific, extending to over one hundred books, three hundred articles, media and television, plus recordings. This Celebration of His Life and Work will include essays on his literary achievements in the areas of Scottish Literature, the Novel, Poetry and New/Historical Criticism and the American connection, and the academic as populariser, by distinguished scholars and critics.
… The book will appeal to historians of twentieth century literary and cultural criticism, the History of twentieth-century Universities, students of Scottish and American Literature, and the relationship between the academic and journalism in the twentieth century.

Introduction: The Biography William Baker Introduction: A Personal Reflection Michael Lister Part I: Essays From Two Worlds to God and the Poets: David Daiches’ Role as Critical Mediator Martin Bidney David Daiches and the Idea of a New University Lord Asa Briggs Was Too: Time Passed With David Daiches Janet Burroway Longer Days Jenni Calder Bridge Building Jenni Calder God and the Little Poets: On David Daiches and Muriel Spark Owen Dudley Edwards David Daiches and John Milton Alastair Fowler Repaying a Debt: David Daiches and Scottish Literature Douglas Gifford David Daiches on Scottish Literature Andrew Hook Scottish Literature at the Crossroads: An Encouraging Voice R.D.S. Jack ‘ One City’ of Fragments: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Second (Person) City Through David Daiches’ Personal Eye Caroline McCracken-Flesher Destinations of Choice: Stevenson at Vailima, Hardy at Max Gate Michael Millgate Daiches and the Modern Ira B. Nadel David Daiches’ The Novel and the Modern World (1939) and the Reclamation of Joseph Conrad’s Literary Reputation John G. Peters The Allusive Hume: With Specific Reference to John Milton and Matthew Prior John Valdimir Price David Daiches: The Family Background David Daiches Raphael Co-Ordinate Points: A Portrait of David Daiches Alan Riach David Daiches: A Founding Dean of the University of Sussex Angus Ross Le Bon David: A Tribute to a Unique Scholar, Critic, and Literary Historian Ian Simpson Ross Looking into ‘Mézeray’ Roger Savage David Daiches and Scotland Paul Henderson Scott ‘A Very Strange Plant’: Carlyle, John Mitchel, and the Political Legacy of Swift David R. Sorensen Two Medieval Hebrew Devotional Poems: Convention, Evaluation, and ‘Platonic’ vs. ‘Metaphysical’ Poetry Reuven Tsur Separation and Synthesis: Understanding the Two Worlds of David Daiches and Jane Austen Melora G. Vandersluis Part II: Bibliography David Daiches: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography, 1923-2006 William Baker and Michael Lister Index

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