Dear Peter and all,
I am deeply shocked by this sad news. I had met Julia only twice, in
New York and Leicester, and like others was immediately struck by her
intellect, genial wit, caring nature, and presence. But in these brief
encounters I did not gather from her or others any hint of her struggle
with cancer. I very much admired her approach to literary life through
writing process, and have been planning a book on Melville in much the
same vein. Her work gave me hope for the promise of a new kind of
biographical study, and her passing at such an early age is a loss to
letters as well as to her family, colleagues, students, and friends.
yrs,
John
___________
John Bryant, English Department, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549
>>> [log in to unmask] 08/17/07 4:10 AM >>>
Dear everyone
It is with great sadness that I write that Julia Briggs, Professor of
Literature and Women's Studies at De Montfort University, died
yesterday. Julia was a wonderful scholar, colleague and friend. Beside
her remarkable critical and biographical work on Shakespeare, Virginia
Woolf, Thomas Middleton, Edith Nesbit and many others -- she disdained
narrowness, in all things -- she was also a fine editor (thus, her work
on Virginia Woolf, and more recently on Middleton), and the moving force
behind the online Hockliffe collection and many another editorial
enterprise. She gave the ESTS great support in its early days: her essay
on Hope Mirlees' Paris is one of the glories of our first number of
Variants. Personally, I owed her a great debt as she was the prime
mover in bringing me to De Montfort and then in established the Centre
for Technology and the Arts (now, the Centre for Textual Scholarship) as
a happy academic home for many years for myself, always with extensive
visiting rights for Julia.
There is a rather nice obituary (refreshingly honest, for this genre:
Julia might have appreciated that) for her at
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2871464.ece
In so many ways, she was what is best in academic life -- and indeed,
with her zest and generosity, so much what is best in all life. She
will be much missed.
Peter Robinson
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