Obituary: Tony Inglis
Tony Inglis, Senior Lecturer in English from 1964 until his retirement in 2001, died on 22 July 2016 aged 80.
Tony was one of a number of members of the English department in its pioneering days born and educated in Scotland (including the late David Daiches, the late Patricia Thomson, Michael Jamieson and Angus Ross) who brought clarity, intellectual breadth and a strong sense of civic engagement to their teaching and writing.
Tony’s range of knowledge and expertise was extraordinary and he was as much at home in teaching the literature and culture of the English Civil War or the eighteenth century as he was in teaching the literature and culture of the Victorian period or modernist fiction.
He was a specialist in the work of Virginia Woolf, on whom he wrote a number of important essays, D. H. Lawrence (whose essays he edited for Penguin) and Walter Scott. His Penguin edition of The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1994) and his Edinburgh University Press edition of Woodstock (2009) show to the full his rigorous scholarship, historical understanding and finesse as a literary critic.
Tony was a much admired colleague, respected for his dedication to his students and to the life of the department. He kept abreast of developments in the discipline and his engagement as teacher and scholar with theories of reading and interpretation were valued additions to the distinctive style of teaching and research in the department of English Literature at Sussex from the 1980s onwards.
His wife Bet and his daughter Kitty have also contributed enormously to the intellectual life of the university. Bet Inglis was a distinguished member of the university library from 1968 to 2000, and Kitty Inglis has been Librarian at Sussex since 2008.
A long-standing member of the former AUT (Association of University Teachers), Tony’s advice and support were greatly appreciated by colleagues in the School of English and American Studies and in the university as a whole.
Tony was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and Lewy Body dementia in 2009, which he bore with dignity. He is survived by Bet, his three daughters and three grandsons.