David Musselwhite


David Musselwhite 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.
He was the author of two books - Partings Welded Together: Politics and Desire in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel, and Social Transformations in Hardy’s Tragic Novels: Megamachines and Phantasms. Both books were widely reviewed, with the latter described by Tim Armstrong as “...a theoretically provocative and fascinating study.” and by Andrew Radford as "...not only accessible to Hardy enthusiasts, but necessary to academic specialists".
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".
His main research areas were the English novel, Latin American literature, and the Enlightenment, and he published numerous articles in these fields.

Publications

Books

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.

Articles