Malcolm Bradbury, Author, Critic and Teacher, Dies at 68

LONDON, Nov. 28 -- Sir Malcolm Bradbury, the English author, critic, biographer and teacher known for his passionate support of British and American fiction, died yesterday in Norwich, England. He was 68 and lived in Norwich.

He had been ill for some months, his family said.

Sir Malcolm was renowned for his biographies of literary figures like E. M. Forster, Saul Bellow and Evelyn Waugh, for the 40 or so volumes of literary criticism he published in his long career and for his six novels. But in Britain, he was just as celebrated as a generous and enthusiastic writing teacher and as the founder, with Angus Wilson, of the creative writing program at the University of East Anglia, the first program of its kind in Britain.

When the two men set up the program in 1970, modeling it on courses in American universities, the idea that creative writing could be practiced in a classroom was anathema to British academia. Indeed, when the course was first advertised, a single student signed up. That was Ian McEwan, who would go on to win the Booker Prize much later, but who used his year as the program's only pupil to write a score of short stories and to sketch the outlines of his first two novels. Later the novelists Rose Tremain and Kazuo Ishiguro also attended the course.

But whether as a critic, a novelist, or an indefatigable champion of his new writers -- he held a party every year to introduce his students to literary agents of his acquaintance -- Sir Malcolm was most of all a great lover of books and of reading and writing. As he wrote in an essay for The New York Times Book Review in 1989, ''Writing is teasing, exciting, a chase through the mysteries of narrative, filled with deception, delays, reticence and revelation, rising expectation and sudden fulfillment.''

Malcolm Stanley Bradbury was born in Sheffield, England, in 1932. His father was a railroad worker, and though his parents were enthusiastic readers, they tended to borrow books from the library rather than keep them around the house.

''Our one bookshelf held, I recall, the Bible and 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' '' Sir Malcolm wrote in The Times Book Review. ''There was also one railway timetable; a very anxious book on etiquette, explaining how to address correctly the dukes and bishops we somehow never seemed to meet; a work on how to deal promptly with scalds and fractures; a volume on making small home improvements and erecting wooden sheds.''

Sir Malcolm was a sickly child whose heart ailment was once featured in The Lancet, the British medical journal. His delicate constitution led him to avoid sports and rely on his brains instead of his muscles.

''Human flesh,'' he once observed, ''was intended as a highly imperfect and disappointingly mortal carapace for the housing of something a good deal better, the human mind.''

He went to the University College of Leicester and earned his doctorate in American Studies from the University of Manchester, taking his first full-time academic job in the adult education department at the University of Hull in 1959. He then joined the English department at the University of Birmingham before moving to the new University of East Anglia at Norwich in 1965.

In addition to directing the creative writing program, which soon established itself as a refreshing alternative to the sometimes stodgy atmospheres of Oxford and Cambridge, he was professor of American studies there. He retired in 1995.

Sir Malcolm didn't see his mission as teaching the students to write; rather, he would encourage them to develop their own talents. ''Working through the problems with them,'' he said, ''we could at least display the variety of solutions.''

He wrote short stories as well as six novels, many of them academic satires. His first novel was ''Eating People Is Wrong,'' published in 1959; the last was ''To the Hermitage,'' which was based on Diderot's visit to the court of Catherine the Great and was published last spring. Other novels included ''Stepping Westward'' (1965), ''The History Man'' (1975), ''Rates of Exchange''(1982) and ''Dr. Criminale'' (1992).

''The History Man'' was his best-known work of fiction. The story of Howard Kirk, a libidinous, left-leaning sociology professor who callously manipulates and betrays his impressionable students, it had more bite and a darker tone than his other novels and was seen as a scathing portrait of British academia in the 1960's. The book was adapted for television in a production full of risque scenes that starred Anthony Sher, then unknown.

But writing fiction didn't prevent Sir Malcolm from producing all manner of other forms. He wrote a number of original television screenplays and adapted the work of Kingsley Amis, Tom Sharpe, Stella Gibbons, Reginald Hill and others for television. At the same time, he produced a prodigious list of critical works, including ''The Social Context of Modern English Literature'' (1972), ''The Modern American Novel'' (1983) and ''The Modern British Novel'' (1993), and served as editor for many others, including ''The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories'' (1987) and ''The Atlas of Literature'' (1996).

Sir Malcolm, who was knighted earlier this year, is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and two sons, Dominic and Matthew.

In tributes pouring in from other writers today, Sir Malcolm was remembered as an erudite thinker of endless charm and energy who always loved a good party.

''I invited him to lunch once,'' recalled Ms. Tremain, ''and he didn't leave until 7:30 p.m.'' And he was remembered for his love of fiction.

''I take the novel extremely seriously,'' Sir Malcolm once said. ''It is the best of all forms: open and personal, intelligent and inquiring. I value it for its skepticism, its irony and its play.''

Published in November 29, 2000

By Sarah Lyall

On The New York Times On The Web

http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/01/specials/bradbury-obit.html

Other interesting articles written by Bradbury: [Next] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

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