Hugo Dyson

Academia

Dyson taught English at the University of Reading from 1924 until obtaining a fellowship with Merton College, Oxford in 1945. He retired in 1963 but returned as emeritus fellow in 1969, teaching the newly introduced "modern" literature paper. His tutorials were notable because many of the writers he discussed had been personal friends.

Works

Dyson was not a prolific writer, but the quality and voluminous quantity of his lectures and general conversation had quite an effect on people. He wrote the introduction of his first published book Poetry and Prose (1933) which is a collection of works of Alexander Pope with notes by Dyson. Another of his few publications is Augustans and Romantics, 1689-1830 (1940), a survey of contemporary English literature with a bibliography by Professor John Butt.

Dyson preferred talk at Inklings meetings to readings. He was also known to have a distaste for J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and is recorded by Christopher Tolkien as "lying on the couch, and lolling and shouting and saying, 'Oh God, no more elves'". Dyson was not alone in his distaste for Tolkien's stories, and eventually Tolkien gave up reading from them to the group altogether. It seems from the letters of C.S. Lewis that Dyson was considered the most fun-loving of the Inklings, and Warren Lewis liked him best of all..

Television and film

Dyson, an expert on Shakespeare, was asked during the early 1960s to host some televised lectures and plays about the great writer. Dyson's relaxed style won him several new friends which resulted in being cast in a small part in the 1965 film Darling as Professor Walter Southgate, a major literary character.

Hugo Dyson lived at 32 Sandfield Road in the east Oxford suburb of Headington until his death. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford.