Derek Stanley Brewer was a medieval

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

 scholar, author and publisher.

Life

Born in Cardiff

Cardiff

Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...

, Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

, the son of a clerk with General Electric, Brewer read English at Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

, where he was taught, among others, by C.S. Lewis. He served as infantry

Infantry

Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...

 officer

Officer (armed forces)

An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...

 with the Worcestershire Regiment

Worcestershire Regiment

The Worcestershire Regiment was an infantry regiment of the line in the British Army, formed in 1881 by the amalgamation of the 29th Regiment of Foot and the 36th Regiment of Foot....

 and with the Royal Fusiliers 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...

, from 1942 to 1945, then returned to Oxford. He was appointed lecturer

Lecturer

Lecturer is an academic rank. In the United Kingdom, lecturer is a position at a university or similar institution, often held by academics in their early career stages, who lead research groups and supervise research students, as well as teach...

 at the University of Birmingham

University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...

, where he remained until 1964, when he moved to Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

 to take up the position of lecturer in English and then become fellow of Emmanuel College

Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...

. From 1977 to 1990 he served his college as Master.

Brewer was one of the most recognized Chaucer scholars of modern times—his Chaucer and His World (1978, reissued 2000) "could be said to have started a whole new genre in historical literary biography." He was also the founder in 1972 of an academic press named for him, D.S. Brewer, now Boydell & Brewer

Boydell & Brewer

Boydell & Brewer is an academic press based in Woodbridge, Suffolk, England that specializes in publishing historical and critical works. In addition to British and general history, the company publishes three series devoted to studies, editions, and translations of material related to the...

, which made a mark publishing scholarly work neglected by the larger presses.

He died in Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, a month after the death of his wife Elisabeth. Obituaries in all the main British newspapers and blogs in the US speak highly of his love of literature and the profession, his advocacy of struggling academics of the medieval period to get their work published, his encouragement of female students (a rarity in the medieval field during much of his lifetime), and his courtesy and friendliness.

Books authored and edited

• Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parlement of Foulys. Ed. Derek Brewer. London: Nelson, 1960.
• Chaucer, the Critical Heritage. Ed. Derek Brewer. London, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. ISBN 0710084978.
• Chaucer and His World. London: Eyre Methuen, 1978. ISBN 0413343405.
• Symbolic Stories: Traditional Narratives of the Family Drama in English Literature. Cambridge: Brewer; Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980. ISBN 0847669009.
• Traditional Stories and Their Meanings. London: English Association, 1983. ISBN 0900232137.
• An Introduction to Chaucer. London, New York: Longman, 1984. ISBN 0582493560.
• Studies in Medieval English Romances: Some New Approaches. Ed. Derek Brewer. Cambridge: Brewer, 1988.
• A Companion to the Gawain-Poet. Ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997. ISBN 08859915298.

Articles

• "Chaucer and the Bible." In Kinshiro Oshitari et al., eds., Philologia Anglica: Essays Presented to Professor Yoshio Terasawa on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday. Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1988. 270-84.
• "Chaucer's Poetic Style." In Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds., The Cambridge Chaucer Companion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 227-42.
• "Orality and Literacy in Chaucer." In Willi Ertzgräber and Sabine Volk, eds., Mundlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im englischen Mittelalter. Script Oralia 5. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1988. 85-119.
• "Contributions to a Chaucer Word-Book from Troilus Book IV." In Michio Kawai, ed., Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honor of Michio Masui. English Research Association of Hiroshima. Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991. 27-52.
• "Arithmetic and the Mentality of Chaucer." In Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds., Literature in Fourteenth-Century England: The J. A. W. Bennett
  J. A. W. Bennett
  Jack Arthur Walter Bennett was a New Zealand-born literary scholar. He was best known as a scholar of Middle English literature. He was editor of the journal Medium Aevum from 1956 to 1980, having earlier assisted his predecessor, C. T. Onions, and was a colleague of C. S. Lewis at Magdalen...
  
  Memorial Lectures, Perugia, 1981-1982. Tübingen: Narr; Cambridge: Brewer, 1983. 155-64.
• "Chaucer's Venuses." In Juliette Dor, ed., A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens Fonck. Liège: Université de Liège, 1992. 30-40.