Philip Thody


Philip Malcolm Waller Thody was an English scholar of French literature, Professor of French Literature at Leeds University from 1965 until 1993. He translated and edited work by Albert Camus and Lucien Goldmann, and wrote book-length studies of writers including Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Marcel Proust, Aldous Huxley and Roland Barthes.

Life

Philip Thody was born in Lincoln on 21 March 1928. Educated in Lincoln, he studied French at King's College London. He then lived in Paris for two years, writing a thesis on 'The Vogue of the American Novel in France since 1944', and spent a year as a lecteur at the Sorbonne. In 1954 he married Joy Woodin, and they would have four children. In 1956 he was appointed Assistant Lecturer, and later Lecturer, at Queen's University Belfast. In 1965 he was appointed Professor of French Literature at Leeds University, and held the post until retirement in 1993. He died in Leeds on 15 June 1999.

Works