Donald Adamson

Donald Adamson, (30 March 1939 – 18 January 2024), was a British literary scholar and historian.

Books which he wrote include Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God and Balzac and the Tradition of the European Novel, as well as The Curriers' Company: A Modern History. Adamson's works are regarded as a gateway to European literature.

Biography
Born at Culcheth in Lancashire to a farming family, his grandfather in Lymm died when he was two years old, so they moved to the Booth family farm overlooking the Bridgewater Canal in Cheshire. His maternal uncle, and godfather, was Major Gerald Loxley. His father's family was of Scottish extraction, and a distant cousin was Mgr Thomas Adamson.

From 1949 to 1956 he attended Manchester Grammar School where he was taught by, amongst others, Eric James (later Lord James of Rusholme). He became a scholar of Magdalen College, Oxford, and was tutored by Austin Gill and Sir Malcolm Pasley, graduating BA in 1959, proceeding MA in 1963. He won the Zaharoff Travelling Scholar Prize of the University of Oxford for 1959–60, thereafter studying at the Paris-Sorbonne University, being tutored by Pierre-Georges Castex. In 1962 he took the degree of BLitt, proceeding Master of Letters (MLitt); his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil), entitled "Balzac and the Visual Arts", was supervised by Jean Seznec of All Souls College, Oxford.

Adamson spent much of his teaching career at London University, although he taught at Manchester Grammar School from 1962 to 1964 and then at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand from 1964 to 1965. He taught at St George's Church of England School, Gravesend in 1968.

In 1969 he joined Goldsmiths' College, where his teaching did much to enhance the University of London's standing throughout French academic circles. In 1971 he was appointed a Recognised Teacher in the Faculty of Arts of the University of London and, in 1972, a member of its Faculty of Education, holding both appointments until 1989. He served as Chairman of the Board of Examiners at London University from 1983 until 1986, attracting candidates for undergraduate degrees including external students from the UK, Europe and Asia. In 2021 he was awarded Hon FCIL.

In 1989 he was elected a Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, being a promoter in the fields of public policy on the arts, libraries and museums. By speaking, writing and, through the Bow Group, submitting (with Sir John Hannam MP) written and oral evidence to a Parliamentary select committee, he helped to establish the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Adamson was a member of the judging committee of the Museum of the Year Awards from 1979 to 1983, before donating to the National Library of Wales and the National Library of Malta.

Joining the Order of St John in 1981, he became Deputy Director of Ceremonies of the Priory of England and the Islands (the Isle of Wight, the Isles of Scilly, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) serving until 2008.

From 19 October 2012 until 11 October 2013 Adamson served as Master of the Worshipful Company of Curriers of the City of London, then as Senior Court Assistant from 2015, before being awarded Honorary Court Assistantship in 2023. During his term as Master Currier he endowed The Curriers' Company London History Essay Prize, which is competed for annually by young graduates of British universities; winning essays being published in The London Journal, he stepped down from executive oversight in 2021. Adamson also established sixteen annual prizes in mathematics and history for pupils aged 14 to 15 at four London academies. In 1976 Adamson became a liveryman of the Haberdashers' Company.

His personal interests included the history of religion and genealogy. He was also an enthusiastic art collector, mainly of Western European art, including a work of Eugène Isabey, and drawings of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Adamson contributed much on the history of Cornwall and died suddenly in Polperro on 18 January 2024, at the age of 84. A service in his memory was held on 15 April 2024 at the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London. He and his wife divided their time between homes in Kent and Polperro, Cornwall.

Scope of his writing
The Genesis of Le Cousin Pons, substantially the text of Adamson's (BLitt) thesis, is a detailed study of the manuscript and proof-sheets of this very late work. Tracing the progress of the novel through its various editions, it reveals the full extent of Balzac's improvisation from novella to full-length masterpiece.

Illusions Perdues, a critical study of what is Balzac's most mature work, outlines its strong autobiographical element, analysing contrasts of Paris and the provinces, the purity of the artist's life and the corruptions of journalism, and the ambiguity of Balzac's narrative outlook. Major themes of the book are that in "fiction" is truth and in "truth" fiction, and that Illusions Perdues is the first novel by any writer to highlight the shaping of public opinion by the media, usually done in the pursuit of power or money.

Blaise Pascal considers its subject from biographical, theological, religious and mathematical points of view, including the standpoint of physics. There is a chapter on the argument of the Wager. The analysis is slightly inclined in a secular direction, giving greater emphasis to Pascal's concern with the contradictions of human nature, and rather less to his deep and traditional preoccupation with Original Sin. Since writing this book, Adamson has produced further work on Pascal's mathematical comprehension of God.

His historical writings fall into three categories: a monograph on Spanish art and French Romanticism, illuminating the opening-up of Spain and Spanish art to travellers from France and other parts of Western Europe, and to enthusiasts in those countries; articles on manorial and banking history; and, the modern workings of a City livery company. Adamson has also written on travel in England and Wales in the 18th century.

Adamson's study of one year in the life of the celebrated artist Oskar Kokoschka has been published to critical acclaim, as have his recollections of Sir William Golding.

Philosophy of literature
According to Adamson, literature does not need to fulfil any social mission or purpose; yet, as with Émile Zola or D. H. Lawrence, there is every reason why it can highlight social evils. A novel or novella – or a biography – is not merely an absorbing story: in Matthew Arnold's words, the best prose is, like poetry, "a criticism of life". This means that they convey some sort of philosophy of the world (in Arnold's words, "How to live" ), though some writers, such as Adalbert Stifter and Jane Austen (to whom, incidentally, he is related through his mother do this less than most others, whilst on the other hand Samuel Beckett conveys a profoundly negative philosophy of life.

All too often, in Adamson's view, people go through their lives without living or seeking any belief which, for him, is the supreme attractiveness of Blaise Pascal, whose philosophy was of a unique kind: grounded in the vagaries of human nature; not essentially seeking to convince by mathematics; and foreshadowing Søren Kierkegaard and 20th-century existentialism in its appeal to human experience.

Honours and awards

 * Order of St John (UK) ribbon -vector.svg Knight of Justice, Order of St John of Jerusalem
 * Service Medal of the Order of St John Ribbon.svg Service Medal, Order of St John of Jerusalem (with bar)
 * Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Officier ribbon.svg Officier, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
 * Palmes academiques Chevalier ribbon.svg Chevalier, Ordre des Palmes académiques
 * MelitenseMilitare.png Cross of Merit, Order pro Merito Melitensi
 * Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
 * Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
 * Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
 * Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists
 * Justice of the Peace of the City of London, later Cornwall.