In memory of Peter Faulkner
Tributes have been paid to a longstanding Honorary Professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing, who has recently passed away.
Professor Peter Faulkner, a member of the Centre for Victorian Studies, was acknowledged as one the world’s leading William Morris scholars.
He was a long-time editor of the Journal of William Morris Studies, and he authored or edited a significant number of publications, including: The Collected Works of William Morris; William Morris: Centenary Essays; William Morris: The Critical Heritage; Against the Age: An Introduction to William Morris; William Morris: Selected Poems; Fifty Years of Morris Studies; and The White Man’s Burdens: An Anthology of British Poetry of the Empire (with Exeter Professor Chris Brooks). He also edited an edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
Staff across the Department have shared personal tributes for Professor Faulkner, reflecting upon his generosity, kindness and intellect. He was especially encouraging to postgraduate students and early career colleagues, many of whom credit him with influencing not just their intellectual development but also an inclusive and cooperative scholarly ethos.
Although Peter retired several years ago, he remained active in the Department’s cultural life, and he continued to advise and inspire many of the scholars who have since become the senior cohort of nineteenth-century specialists in English and Creative Writing.
Professor Regenia Gagnier, who has been with the Department for nearly thirty years, wrote: “We remember our colleague and comrade Peter Faulkner as entirely worthy of his objects of study: sociable, creative, kind, and just. A great scholar, and a very good man.”
