David Daiches was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 literary historian and literary critic, scholar and writer. He wrote extensively on English literature

English literature

English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....

, Scottish literature

Scottish literature

Scottish literature is literature written in Scotland or by Scottish writers. It includes literature written in English, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Brythonic, French, Latin and any other language in which a piece of literature was ever written within the boundaries of modern Scotland.The earliest...

 and Scottish culture.

Early life

He was born in Sunderland, into a Jewish family with a Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

n background—the subject of his 1956 memoir, Two Worlds: An Edinburgh Jewish Childhood. He moved to Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

 while still a young child, about the end of World War I, where his father, Rev. Dr. Salis Daiches was rabbi

Rabbi

In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

 to Edinburgh's Jewish community, and founder of the city's branch of B'nai Brith. He studied at George Watson's College

George Watson's College

George Watson's College, known informally as Watson's, is a co-educational independent day school in Scotland, situated on Colinton Road, in the Merchiston area of Edinburgh. It was first established as a hospital school in 1741, became a day school in 1871 and was merged with its sister school...

 and won a scholarship to University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

 where he won the Elliot prize. He went to Oxford where he became the Elton exhibitioner

Exhibition (scholarship)

-United Kingdom and Ireland:At the universities of Dublin, Oxford and Cambridge, and at Westminster School, Eton College and Winchester College, and various other UK educational establishments, an exhibition is a financial award or grant to an individual student, normally on grounds of merit. The...

, and was elected Fellow

Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

 of Balliol College

Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

 in 1936.

Daiches is the father of Jenni Calder

Jenni Calder

Jenni Calder is a Scottish literary historian, and arts establishment figure. She was formerly married to Angus Calder, and is the daughter of David Daiches. She also once ran the Edinburgh Book Festival.-Some works:...

, also a Scottish literary historian. His brother was the prominent Edinburgh QC

Queen's Counsel

Queen's Counsel , known as King's Counsel during the reign of a male sovereign, are lawyers appointed by letters patent to be one of Her [or His] Majesty's Counsel learned in the law...

 Lionel Daiches.

Career

During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he worked for the British Embassy in Washington, DC, producing pamphlets for the British Information Service and drafting (and delivering) speeches on British institutions and foreign policy.

Daiches' first published work was The Place of Meaning in Poetry, published in 1935. He was a prolific writer, producing works on English literature, Scottish literature, literary history and criticism

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

 as well as the broader role of literature in society and culture. His The Novel and the Modern World (1939) was well-received and his expertise on the modern period

Modernist literature

Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...

 led to his co-editing The Norton Anthology of English Literature (1962). He also wrote the two-volume A Critical History of English Literature and edited the Penguin Companion to Literature - Britain and the Commonwealth (1971). He wrote biographical and critical works on Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

, Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

, Robert Burns

Robert Burns

Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...

, D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...

, John Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

, and Sir Walter Scott. He also wrote two autobiographical volumes, books on Scotch Whisky

Scotch whisky

Scotch whisky is whisky made in Scotland.Scotch whisky is divided into five distinct categories: Single Malt Scotch Whisky, Single Grain Scotch Whisky, Blended Malt Scotch Whisky , Blended Grain Scotch Whisky, and Blended Scotch Whisky.All Scotch whisky must be aged in oak barrels for at least three...

, the King James Bible, and the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, a biography of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and a volume of poetry.

Starting at the University of Edinburgh, he had a long and influential career teaching in the UK, the US and Canada. He taught or held visiting posts at Balliol College, the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

, Jesus College, Cambridge

Jesus College, Cambridge

Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The College was founded in 1496 on the site of a Benedictine nunnery by John Alcock, then Bishop of Ely...

, Indiana University

Indiana University Bloomington

Indiana University Bloomington is a public research university located in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. IU Bloomington is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. Being the flagship campus, IU Bloomington is often referred to simply as IU or Indiana...

, the University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

, McMaster University

McMaster University

McMaster University is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens...

 in Canada, Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

 in Connecticut, and the University of California

University of California

The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...

; besides setting up the English Department at the newly founded University of Sussex

University of Sussex

The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....

. From 1979 to 1984 he was President of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies

Association for Scottish Literary Studies

The Association for Scottish Literary Studies is a Scottish educational charity, founded in 1970 to promote and support the teaching, study and writing of Scottish literature. Its founding members included the Scottish literary scholar Matthew McDiarmid...

 and from 1980 to 1986 he was Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Edinburgh University.
Daiches chaired the panel of judges for the Booker Prize in 1980.

List of published works

• The Place of Meaning in Poetry (1935)
• New Literary Values; Studies in Modern Literature (1936)
• Literature and Society (1938)
• Poetry and the Modern World: A Study of Poetry in England Between 1900 and 1939 (1940)
• Virginia Woolf (1942)
• Robert Louis Stevenson (1947)
• A Study of Literature (For Readers and Critics) (1948)
• Robert Burns (1950)
• Stevenson and the Art of Fiction (1951)
• A Century of the Essay: British and American (1951)
• Willa Cather - A Critical Introduction (1951)
• Two Worlds : An Edinburgh Jewish Childhood (1956) (memoirs)
• Literary Essays (1956)
• Critical Approaches to Literature (1956)
• The Present Age in British Literature (After 1920) (1958)
• Two Studies: The Poetry of Dylan Thomas, Walt Whitman: Impressionist Prophet (1958)
• Robert Louis Stevenson - a Laurel Reader (1959) editor
• A Critical History of English Literature (1960) two volumes
• The Novel and the Modern World (1960)
• White Man in the Tropics: Two Moral Tales (1962)
• D. H. Lawrence (1963)
• George Eliot: Middlemarch (1963)
• English Literature (1964)
• Milton (1964)
• The Idea of a New University. An Experiment in Sussex (1964) editor
• The Paradox of Scottish Culture: The Eighteenth Century Experience (1964)
• More Literary Essays (1968)
• The King James Version of the English Bible (1968)
• Scotch Whisky: Its Past and Present (1969)
• Some Late Victorian Attitudes (1969) Ewing Lectures
• A Third World (1971) (memoirs)
• Penguin Companion to Literature - Britain and the Commonwealth (1971) editor
• Sir Walter Scott and His World (1971)
• Robert Burns and His World (1972)
• Literature and Western Civilization (1972-6) editor with Anthony Thorlby, six volumes
• Robert Louis Stevenson and His World (1973)
• Bonnie Prince Charlie: The Life and Times of Charles Edward Stuart (1973)
• Moses: Man in the Wilderness (1975) Moses: The Man and the Vision in the US
• Was: A Pastime from Time Past (1975)
• James Boswell and His World (1976)
• Shakespeare: Julius Caesar (1976)
• Glasgow (1977)
• Scotland and the Union (1977)
• Edinburgh (1978)
• The Butterfly and the Cross (1978)
• The Selected Poems of Robert Burns (1979)
• Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun. Selected Political Writings and Speeches (1979) editor
• Literary Landscapes of the British Isles. A Narrative Atlas (1979) with John Flower
• A Companion to Scottish Culture (1981)
• The Avenel Companion to English and American Literature (1981) editor
• Literature and Gentility in Scotland (1982)
• God and the Poets (1984) Gifford Lectures (1983)
• A Hotbed of Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment, 1730–1790 (1986) editor with Jean Jones and Peter Jones
• Let's Collect Scotch Whisky (Jarrold Collectors Series) (1988)
• A Wee Dram: Drinking Scenes from Scottish Literature (1990)
• A Weekly Scotsman and Other Poems (1994)

External links