R. C. Alston
Robin Carfrae Alston, OBE, FSA (29 January 1933 – 29 June 2011) was a bibliographer.
Early life and education
Alston was born in Trinidad. In 1936, his family (owners of a prosperous shipping business) moved to Barbados. He was subsequently sent to Rugby School, which he did not enjoy, although he did develop a lifelong enthusiasm for jazz piano playing. He went to the University of British Columbia for his BA, graduating in 1954. He then took an MA at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.[1]
Following his MA, Alston taught briefly at the University of Toronto from 1956 to 1958, as well as the University of New Brunswick, before moving to King's College London for a PhD on early-modern spelling reform in English.[1][2] According Stephen Green, Alston 'brought an irrepressible enthusiasm' to this work and the historical bibliography it entailed: 'restless, professionally and personally, in the early 1960s he travelled throughout Europe for months in his VW Beetle, startling the keepers of libraries great and small with his insistence on the first-hand inspection of their collections'.[1] This work has been characterised at the first step on Alston's road towards his magnum opus, his Bibliography of the English Language.[3] In the assessment of Stephen Green, 'Alston was no saint, but a gallant adventurer who often broke rules (and hearts) in the intense pursuit of his truth'.[1]
Academic career
Alston graduated in 1964 and in the same year became a
Alston left Leeds in 1976, becoming the editor-in-chief of what became the Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue in 1977, based at the British Library. Amidst personal tensions with his American collaborator Henry Snyder, Alston left the project in 1989.[1]
In 1990 he became
Honours
Alston became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA).[2] In 1992 he was appointed OBE[1] and in 2005 he received the honorary degree of DLitt from University College London.[3]
Marriages and children
In 1957, Alston married Joanna Ormiston, with whom he had three children (two of whom survived him). In 1996, they divorced and Alston married Janet Pedley-King, divorcing in 1999. He married his third wife, Conceição Neves da Silva Colella, in 2010.[1]
Publications
Alston's most important work was the A Bibliography of the English Language from the Invention of Printing to the Year 1800, which he had nearly completed when he died, with twenty volumes published.[1] It built on the 1927 work of Kennedy, A Bibliography of Writings on the English Language from the Beginning of Printing to the End of 1922.[3]
Archives
Parts of Alston's archive and book collection are held by the National Library of Australia. Information on his archived webpages is here.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Stephen Green, 'Robin Alston Obituary: Scholar Behind The Bibliography of the English Language', The Guardian (2 October 2011).
- ^ a b c d 'Emeritus Professor Robin Alston, OBE, FSA', University of Leeds secretariat (2011).
- ^ a b c d e f 'Professor Robin Alston', The Times (25 August 2011).
- ^ A. C. C. and R. C. A., 'Editorial Note', Leeds Studies in English, new series, 1 (1967), [ii].
Further reading
- David McKitterick, 'Alston, Robin Carfrae (1933–2011)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (8 January 2015),