H. T. (Harry) Barnwell (1920–2011)

Harry Barnwell, who died on 30 August 2011 at the age of 91, was an internationally respected scholar of the French seventeenth century who did much to enhance the research culture of French studies nationally. After his first-class degree (1947) and MA (1949, on the early plays of Racine) at Birmingham, there followed a doctoral thesis on Saint-Evremond from Montpellier (1953). He taught at the universities of Montpellier (1947–50), Sheffield (1950–52), Edinburgh (1952–65), Belfast (1965–71), and Glasgow (1971–80). In retirement he became a Fellow of Birmingham University’s Institute for Advanced Research in the Humanities, and an Honorary Professor of that university, also receiving the award of Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques for his services to French culture. He served on the Advisory Panel of the Modern Language Review, was Chairman of the Society for Seventeenth-Century French Studies (1980–82) and from 1999 was its Honorary Life President, was President of the Society for French Studies from 1978 to 1980, and was a long-term member first of the Editorial and then of the Advisory Board of this journal.

Harry Barnwell’s contribution to intellectual debate over more than five decades was expressed in judicious and painstakingly researched books and articles, and also in his careful and always scrupulously fair reviews (over a hundred by the time of his retirement). He was still working until his death, despite serious problems of mobility: the last thing he wrote was an article on Racine for a volume of essays to be published in 2012. Of his more important publications, one could cite: Les Idées morales et critiques de Saint-Evremond (1957); the Selected Letters of Mme de Sévigné, which he translated and edited (1960); the editions of Corneille’s Pompée (1971), of Pascal’s Pensées (1973), and, with his friend and former tutor R. C. Knight, of Racine’s Andromaque (1977); and the short but essential monograph on Molière’s Malade imaginaire (1982). Most influential, perhaps, have been his edition of Corneille’s Writings on the Theatre (1965), whose sixty small-type pages of notes are a treasure trove of erudition, insight, and common sense, and his magisterial monograph The Tragic Drama of Corneille and Racine (1982). In this latter study, informed by an incomparable knowledge of the works and their sources and driven by his profound understanding of dramatic theory, Harry concentrated on the plays of Corneille and Racine as the dramatic artefacts they were created to be: that is, on where the plays came from, on why they were constructed as they were, on how they were crafted to have the greatest emotional effect, and on their truly tragic charge. It is easy to understand why The Tragic Drama remains required reading for those who wish to take seriously the study of seventeenth-century French tragedy.

Much of this distinguished career is a matter of public record. This notice will attempt to highlight what is not. For Harry’s biography is not as straightforward as it might seem. It had moments he himself considered more worthy of attention than his university career, and which perhaps made him the person who proved such a compelling teacher, colleague, and friend.

This quintessential English gentleman was born in Wales two years after the Great War. Teaching was in the blood: his father was the headmaster of Llangernyw school, as his grandfather and great-grandfather had been. In 1933 the family moved to Derbyshire on Mr Barnwell’s appointment as headmaster of St Oswald’s Boys School in Ashbourne, and in 1938 his son gained a scholarship and went to Birmingham to read French. In March 1940, all quiet on the Western Front, Harry went to Grenoble, for a third term that reserved some surprises. On June 17, with the débâcle far advanced, the Channel ports cut off, Paris fallen to the enemy, and the German army fast advancing towards Lyon, the normally imperturbable Harry decided that it might now be prudent to cut short his term abroad. Having been informed that the last train was due...