R. M. Wilson (philologist)

Richard Middlewood Wilson (1908 – 1970) was an English philologist.

Career

Wilson completed his M.A. at Leeds under the supervision of E. V. Gordon in 1931,[1] and in the same year became assistant lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature under Gordon's successor Bruce Dickins, at which time he lived in the Leeds University hall of residence Devonshire Hall.[2] He was promoted in 1937 to lecturer.[3] Wilson continued teaching at Leeds through the Second World War, also undertaking Home Guard duties, and moved to the University of Sheffield in 1946.[4] He subsequently became Professor (and then Professor Emeritus) of English Language there. The university's Special Collections include the R. M. Wilson Memorial Collection, comprising around 180 volumes.[5]

Wilson was a co-editor of the journal Leeds Studies in English and Kindred Languages from its foundation in 1932 to a pause in publication caused by the Second World War.[6] He is best known for his monograph The Lost Literature of Medieval England, which surveyed hints of evidence for traditional, vernacular stories otherwise lost from the written record.

Major publications
  • Sawles Warde: An Early Middle English Homily, Leeds School of English Language Texts and Monographs, 3-4 (Leeds: School of English Language in the University of Leeds, 1938)
  • Early Middle English Texts, ed. by Bruce Dickins and R. M. Wilson (London: Bowes and Bowes, 1951)
  • The Lost Literature of Medieval England (New York: Philosophical Library, 1952); 2nd edn (London: Methuen, 1970), ISBN 0416170005
  • with N. R. Ker, The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle , Early English Text Society, original series, 229 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954)
  • with Derek John de Solla Price, The Equatorie of the Planetis. Peterhouse Cambridge. Manuscript. 75.I. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955)
  • with Percy H. Reaney, A Dictionary of British Surnames (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958)

References
  1. R. M. Wilson, 'An Edition of the Middle English Homily Sawles Warde, with Notes, Glossary and Full Critical and Textual Apparatus' (unpublished MA thesis, University of Leeds (Department of English Language), 1931).
  2. The University of Leeds Calendar, 1931-32 (Leeds, 1931), p. 81.
  3. The University of Leeds Calendar, 1937-38 (Leeds, 1937), p. 90.
  4. Bruce Dickins, 'Preface: Leeds Studies in English, 1932-40', Leeds Studies in English, 7-8 (1952), 1-2 (p. 2).
  5. https://archives.shef.ac.uk/repositories/3/resources/391.
  6. Bruce Dickins, 'Preface: Leeds Studies in English, 1932–40', Leeds Studies in English and Kindred Languages, 7–8 (1952), 1-2.
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