Professor Neil Cornwell (1942–2020)

Abstract

Slavonic and East European Review, 99, 1, 2021 Professor Neil Cornwell (1942–2020) Many former colleagues in the field of Slavonic studies were greatly saddened to learn of the death of Neil Cornwell on 23 March 2020, at the age of 77. Neil graduated in 1972 from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London, where he is still remembered by colleagues from that time as an outstanding undergraduate. He then lectured in the Department of Slavonic Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, from 1973 to 1987, where he also gained his PhD (1983). In 1987 he transferred to the Department of Russian Studies at Bristol, where he was promoted to a chair in 1993 and became Emeritus Professor in 2007. Neil was a highly productive scholar whose corpus of authored books, edited books, articles, chapters and reviews spanned a wide field, from nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature to comparative literature. His first book, The Life, Times and Milieu of V. F. Odoyevsky (Athlone Press, 1986), is a comprehensive and still valuable study of an eccentric dilettante, polymath and writer of prose fiction who made a colourful contribution to Russian literary and intellectual life in the age of Nicholas I. Neil often returned to this fruitful subject. In 1988, he published a Russian edition of Prince Odoevskii’s tales, with notes and bibliography. He also tried his hand at literary translation, producing an English edition of eight of Odoevskii’s stories under the title, The Salamander and Other Gothic Tales (Bristol Classical Press, 1992). He authored two further books on Odoevskii: Vladimir Odoevsky and Romantic Poetics (Berghahn, 1998) and Odoevsky’s Four Pathways into Modern Fiction: A Comparative Study (Manchester University Press, 2010). The publication of the latter, and final, monograph of Neil’s career coincided with the appearance of his translation of two more of Odoevskii’s tales, under the title Two Princesses, with a foreword by Bridget Kendall (Hesperus Classics, 2010). Besides his extensive, pioneering work on this previously little-known writer, Neil produced monographs on three major Russian authors of the classical period and the twentieth century. There was a thoughtful study of Aleksandr Pushkin’s tale, ‘The Queen of Spades’ (Bristol Classical NEIL CORNWELL 156 Press, 2001), which had been preceded by Pasternak’s Novel: Perspectives on ‘Doctor Zhivago’ (Keele University, 1986), and Vladimir Nabokov (Northcote House, 1999). However, Neil was a comparativist as much as a Russianist. His broader interest in European literature and literary movements was reflected in his books, James Joyce and the Russians (Macmillan, 1992; translated into Russian and published in St Petersburg in 1998), The Literary Fantastic: From Gothic to Postmodernism (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990) and The Absurd in Literature (Manchester University Press, 2006). In numerous articles and contributions to books edited by others, his attention also ranged over other non-Russian authors writing within diverse traditions and at various times, from Umberto Eco, Thomas Hardy, Ernst Hoffman, Henry James and Fitz-James O’Brien, to Orhan Pamuk, Jan Potocki and Salman Rushdie. In his excursions into the work of such authors, Neil would generally keep in mind their relation to or affinities with writers in the Russian canon. Neil was also a skilled and energetic editor of valuable collections of essays and materials, such as a collaborative book on the early Soviet prose writer and poet Kharms (another enduring interest), Daniil Kharms and the Poetics of the Absurd: Essays and Materials (Macmillan, 1991). Some of his edited volumes arose from colloquia he himself had organized, notably The Society Tale in Russian Literature: from Odoevskii to Tolstoi (Rodopi, 1998), which contained eleven chapters, one by Neil himself in addition to his introduction, and The Gothic-Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature (Rodopi, 1999), containing twelve chapters and Neil’s substantial introductory essay. Neil’s masterpiece, though, is surely his Reference Guide to Russian Literature (Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998), which perhaps most perfectly reflected his interests, methods, breadth of learning and attention to detail. Running to almost a thousand pages, this volume is of enduring significance for students of Russian literature. It comprises over 500 entries, written by an international team of 180 contributors, on individual authors and...