Donald Adamson


Donald Adamson, , is a British literary scholar, author and historian.
Books which he has written include Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God and The Curriers' Company: A Modern History. His works are regarded as a gateway to European literature.

Biography

Born at Culcheth, Lancashire, Adamson was brought up on his family's farm at Lymm, Cheshire where his mother's Booth family were resident for over 500 years; his maternal uncle, and godfather, was Gerald Loxley. His father's family was of Scottish extraction, and a distant cousin was Mgr Thomas Adamson.
From 1949 to 1956 he attended Manchester Grammar School where he was taught, amongst others, by Eric James. He became a scholar of Magdalen College, Oxford, and was tutored by Austin Gill and Sir Malcolm Pasley, graduating BA in 1959, proceeding MA in 1963. He won the Zaharoff Travelling Scholar Prize of the University of Oxford for 1959–60, thereafter studying at the Paris-Sorbonne University, being tutored by Pierre-Georges Castex. In 1962 he took the degree of BLitt, proceeding Master of Letters ; his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, entitled "Balzac and the Visual Arts", was supervised by Jean Seznec of All Souls College, Oxford.
Adamson spent much of his teaching career at university level, although he taught at Manchester Grammar School from 1962 to 1964 and then at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand from 1964 to 1965. In 1969 he joined Goldsmiths' College and his teaching did much to enhance the University of London's standing throughout French academic circles. In 1971 he was appointed a Recognised Teacher in the Faculty of Arts of the University of London and, in 1972, a member of its Faculty of Education, holding both appointments until 1989. He served as Chairman of the Board of Examiners at London University from 1983 until 1986, attracting candidates for undergraduate degrees including external students from the UK and Europe as well as from Asian countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong.
In 1989 he was elected a Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, having been active in the fields of public policy on the arts, libraries and museums. By speaking, writing and, through the Bow Group, submitting written and oral evidence to a Parliamentary select committee, he helped to establish the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Adamson was a member of the judging committee of the Museum of the Year Awards from 1979 to 1983, and has donated to the National Library of Wales.
He served the Order of St John of Jerusalem from 1981 to 2008, becoming Deputy Director of Ceremonies of the Priory of England and the Islands.
From 19 October 2012 until 11 October 2013 Adamson served as Master of the Worshipful Company of Curriers of the City of London and during his term of office he launched The Curriers' Company London History Essay Prize, which is competed for annually by young graduates of British universities. As Master of the Curriers' Company, he established sixteen annual prizes in mathematics and history for pupils aged 14 to 15 at four London academies. In 1976 he became a liveryman of the Haberdashers' Company.
His personal interests include the history of religion and genealogy. He is also an enthusiastic art collector, mainly of English, French and Italian paintings, including a work of Eugène Isabey, and drawings of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Adamson and his wife divide their time between homes in Kent and Polperro, Cornwall and continues to contribute much on the history of Cornwall.

Honours and fellowships

The Genesis of Le Cousin Pons, substantially the text of Adamson's thesis, is a detailed study of the manuscript and proof-sheets of this very late work. Tracing the progress of the novel through its various editions, it reveals the full extent of Balzac's improvisation from novella to full-length masterpiece.
Illusions Perdues, a critical study of what is Balzac's most mature work, outlines its strong autobiographical element, analysing contrasts of Paris and the provinces, the purity of the artist's life and the corruptions of journalism, and the ambiguity of Balzac's narrative outlook. Major themes of the book are that in "fiction" is truth and in "truth" fiction, and that Illusions Perdues is the first novel by any writer to highlight the shaping of public opinion by the media, usually done in the pursuit of power or money.
Blaise Pascal considers its subject from biographical, theological, religious and mathematical points of view, including the standpoint of physics. There is a chapter on the argument of the Wager. The analysis is slightly inclined in a secular direction, giving greater emphasis to Pascal's concern with the contradictions of human nature, and rather less to his deep and traditional preoccupation with Original Sin. Since writing this book, Adamson has produced further work on Pascal's mathematical comprehension of God.
His historical writings fall into three categories: a monograph on Spanish art and French Romanticism, illuminating the opening-up of Spain and Spanish art to travellers from France and other parts of Western Europe, and to enthusiasts in those countries; articles on manorial and banking history; and, the modern workings of a City livery company. Adamson has also written on travel in England and Wales in the 18th century.
His study of one year in the life of the celebrated artist Oskar Kokoschka has been published to critical acclaim, as have his recollections of Sir William Golding.

Philosophy of literature

According to Adamson, literature does not necessarily need to fulfil any social mission or purpose; yet, as with Émile Zola or D. H. Lawrence, there is no reason why it should not highlight social evils. A novel or novella – or a biography – is not merely an absorbing story: in Matthew Arnold's words, the best prose is, like poetry, "a criticism of life". This means that they convey some sort of philosophy of the world, though some writers, such as Adalbert Stifter and Jane Austen do this less than most others, whilst on the other hand Samuel Beckett conveys a profoundly negative philosophy of life.
All too often, in Adamson's view, people go through their lives without living or seeking any belief which, for him, is the supreme attractiveness of Blaise Pascal, whose philosophy was of a unique kind: grounded in the vagaries of human nature; not essentially seeking to convince by mathematics; and foreshadowing Søren Kierkegaard and 20th-century existentialism in its appeal to human experience.