Derek Brewer (1923–2008)

Derek Brewer’s death on October 23, 2008, at the age of 85, marked the passing not only of a superb Chaucerian scholar and critic but of an outstanding friend to Chaucer studies and all its practitioners. He was a founding member of the Editorial Board of The Chaucer Review and a keen supporter of the New Chaucer Society from its inception, serving as both Trustee and, from 1983–84, as President; he gave its biennial lecture in 1979. The press that he founded, D. S. Brewer, has established itself as perhaps the leading specialist publisher in medieval studies; its Chaucer Studies series now numbers forty-one volumes, and rising. The series list includes many works that have become foundational to Chaucer scholarship: Nigel Wilkins on music, J. D. Burnley on language, Alastair Minnis on pagan antiquity, David Wallace on Boccaccio, and David Lawton on Chaucer’s narrators all appeared within the first thirteen volumes, and its more recent offerings include the new Sources and Analogues (rescued by Derek when it seemed likely to founder with all hands on deck), and a steadily increasing number of essay collections as well as monographs. Chaucer was the strongest element in his own much wider range of interests, but he wrote on most of the major Middle English secular authors (Malory was another favorite), on folktales, and on a broad range of other topics from Old English to Henry James. He also wrote poetry and several times won the Seatonian Prize for poetry awarded by Cambridge University; he collected his poems as Seatonian Exercises, a modesty of title that reflects the precision of their language but that sells short their depth and subtlety of expression and thought.

Born in Cardiff and educated at a grammar school in Gloucester, Derek started a degree in English at Magdalen College, Oxford, but his studies were interrupted by the Second World War. He saw war service as an infantry officer from 1942, spending a key part of his time in Italy, and acquiring a special love for the country and its culture. On his return to Oxford to complete his degree, he was tutored by C. S. Lewis, and the two men became friends as well as colleagues. His first academic post was a lectureship at Birmingham, which he took up in 1949. Two years later he married a fellow medieval scholar, Elisabeth Hoole, and they formed an inseparable partnership for the next fifty-seven years, producing five children along the way. The growing family moved to Japan for two years when Derek took time out from his post in Birmingham to work at the International Christian University in Tokyo (1956–58). Japan at that date was still feeling its way towards its ties with western culture; his presence gave a big boost to the process within the academic world, and the rich tradition of medieval scholarship in the country, from which Chaucer studies still profit in so many ways, derives from his years there. He also encouraged Japanese scholars to visit England, especially after he moved to a lectureship in Cambridge in 1965 (where Elisabeth was able to continue her own academic career at Homerton College). He was encouraging to younger Japanese scholars, too, and supervised Toshiyuki Takamiya’s doctoral thesis: the start of a long and fruitful connection and collaboration.

My own first encounter with Derek came a few years after his move to Cambridge, when I went along to his lectures as an undergraduate. His large glasses made him look slightly owlish, in a way that gave no hint at how exciting and engaging his enthusiasm for the Middle Ages would prove to be. He experimented in later years with growing a beard, which made him look Mephistophelean—a more appropriate look for him, though he didn’t keep it long. The study of Middle English across Europe had been heavily dominated by the philological through to the time he began his teaching career; Derek’s mission in life was to show how much more there was to it. He set out to capture new readers for Chaucer in a series of books, especially Chaucer...