David Musselwhite (3 December 1940 – 23 February 2010) was a British literary critic and academic.
He was born in Bristol and studied first at Cambridge University, then later at the University of Essex, where he subsequently became a Senior Lecturer. He also taught in Argentina, at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, and at Curtin University in Western Australia.[1]
He was the author of two books – Partings Welded Together: Politics and Desire in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel (Methuen, 1987), and Social Transformations in Hardy’s Tragic Novels: Megamachines and Phantasms (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Both books were widely reviewed, with the latter described by Tim Armstrong as “...a theoretically provocative and fascinating study.” (The Modern Language Review[2]) and by Andrew Radford as "...not only accessible to Hardy enthusiasts, but necessary to academic specialists".[3][4]
He initiated the Essex Sociology of Literature Project at the University of Essex in 1976. This involved a set of conferences that according to literary critic, Terry Eagleton "...have a quasi-mythological status in the minds of some who weren’t even born at the time".[5]
His main research areas were the English novel, Latin American literature, and the Enlightenment, and he published numerous articles in these fields.[6]
Partings Welded Together: Politics and Desire in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel, Methuen, 1987.
Social Transformations in Hardy's Tragic Novels: Megamachines and Phantasms, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.