The Origins of a Creative Writing Programme at the University of East Anglia, 1963–1966

Abstract

University of East Anglia (UEA) was the founding centre for the discipline of creative writing in UK higher education, and yet this programme has a longer and more complex history than has been suggested by any previous scholarship. This piece aims to capture the first stage of creative writing at UEA, when a relationship was beginning to form between creative writing and the academy. I argue that the history of UEA creative writing begins with a series of policies made by the university's early administration responsible not only for creating an institution receptive to hiring the novelist Angus Wilson, the first professional writer believed to teach in UK higher education, but also that these initial decisions can account for why formalised creative writing teaching began at UEA as opposed to any other UK university. Next, I will focus on the period of Wilson's employment by UEA from 1963 to 1966. In particular, a piece of correspondence addressed to Wilson from the university's then Dean of English Studies which reveals the negotiation necessary in developing the role of the creative writer in academe. Arguing against popular mythology of the UEA course, I have attempted to reveal the more complicated origins of the UEA creative writing programme.