Dr Geoffrey Hemstedt

Dr Geoffrey Hemstedt, who died suddenly on 23 June at the age of 61, was Senior Lecturer in English in the School of English and American Studies when ill health made it necessary for him to retire in 1999.

Geoffrey joined Sussex in 1971, having studied at Oxford and Princeton, where he completed his doctorate on the Victorian novelists. He was among the first to take a serious interest in the work of the artists and engravers who illustrated their books.

Geoff was well known through the University community, and much loved both as teacher and colleague. He was calm and analytic, able to put difficulties into perspective, while his wisdom and considerable force of character did much to shape the ethos of his subject group and that of his school.

He was an unfussy, effective administrator, whether chairing an examination board or planning the development and expansion of graduate work in English.

He was closely identified with the highly successful MA in Twentieth Century English Literature, but will be particularly remembered by many as an indefatigable and successful research supervisor: astonishing in the range of his erudition, generous almost to a fault with time, above all gifted with that mix of patience and intellectual sympathy needed to help turn round a project in difficulty.