David Musselwhite was a British literary critic and academic.

He was born in Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 and studied first at Cambridge University, then later at the University of Essex

University of Essex

The University of Essex is a British campus university whose original and largest campus is near the town of Colchester, England. Established in 1963 and receiving its Royal Charter in 1965...

, where he subsequently became a Senior Lecturer. He also taught in Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, at the University of the West Indies

University of the West Indies

The University of the West Indies , is an autonomous regional institution supported by and serving 17 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica,...

 in Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

, and at Curtin University in Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

.

He was the author of two books – Partings Welded Together: Politics and Desire in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel (Methuen, 1987), and Social Transformations in Hardy’s Tragic Novels: Megamachines and Phantasms (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Both books were widely reviewed, with the latter described by Tim Armstrong as “...a theoretically provocative and fascinating study.” (The Modern Language Review) and by Andrew Radford as "...not only accessible to Hardy enthusiasts, but necessary to academic specialists".

He initiated the Essex Sociology of Literature Project at the University of Essex in 1976. This involved a set of conferences that according to literary critic, Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton

Terence Francis Eagleton FBA is a British literary theorist and critic, who is regarded as one of Britain's most influential living literary critics...

"...have a quasi-mythological status in the minds of some who weren’t even born at the time".

His main research areas were the English novel, Latin American literature, and the Enlightenment, and he published numerous articles in these fields.

Books

Partings Welded Together: Politics and Desire in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel, Methuen, 1987.

Social Transformations in Hardy's Tragic Novels: Megamachines and Phantasms, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Articles

• "El Perseguidor: un modelo para desarmar", Nuevos Aires, No. 8, Buenos Aires, 1972, 23-36
• "El astillero en marcha", Nuevos Aires, No. 11, Buenos Aires, 1973, 3-15
• "Cecilia Valdes", New World, Jamaica, 1973
• "Los Premios entre lo todo y la nada", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Número 314-315, (Agosto-Septiembre), Madrid, 1976, 520-566
• "La vida y la muerte de Berthe Trepat", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Número 320-21 (Febrero y Marzo), Madrid 1977, 341-359
• "Women in Love: a flawed novel", Essays in Poetics, Vol. I, No. 1 Keele 1976, 48-60
• "Wuthering Heights: the unacceptable text", Red Letters, No. 2, 1976, 3-5
• "Towards a political aesthetics", Literature, Society and the Sociology of Literature, Proceedings of the Essex Conference, ed. F. Barker et al., Essex, 1976, 8-17
• "The novel as narcotic", Proceedings of the Essex Conference, ed. F. Barker et al. Essex, 1978, 207-224
• "The Trial of Warren Hastings", Proceedings of the Essex Conference, ed. F. Barker et al., Essex, 1982, 226-251
• "Notes on a journey to Vanity Fair", Literature and History, 1982
• "Reflections on Burke's Reflections 1790/1990", in The Enlightenment and its Shadows, ed. Peter Hulme and Ludmilla Jordanova, Methuen, 1990, 142-162
• "Hardy's Mega-Machines", in Thomas Hardy: Revista Portuguesa de Estudios Anglo-Americanos, Oporto, 1992, 69-92
• "Death and the Phantasm: A Reading of Cortázar's 'Babas del diablo!", Romance Studies 18, June 2000, 57-68
• "Phantasm and Nation: Sarmiento's Facundo", New Comparison 29 (Spring 2000), 5-26
• "Tess of the d'Urbervilles: 'A Becoming Woman' or Deleuze and Guattari go to Wessex", Textual Practice, 14.3, 2000, 499-518
• "The Colombia of Maria: un paìs de cafres", Romance Studies Vol. 24 (1), March 2006, 41-54
• "Deleuze Goes to Xanadu", Deleuze Studies, vol. 1 no. 2, Dec 2007, 100-125
• "Heart of Darkness: A Minority Report", Salt, issue 3, 2010

Obituary

• Del Valle Alcalá, Roberto (2010) "David E. Musselwhite, 1940-2010", 'The European English Messenger', 19.2 View entire article in pdf: http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/57457689/Obituaries