John Robert Wahl

John Robert Wahl (19**-19**) was an academic and lecturer,

More generally known as J.R. Wahl or Robert Wahl

Biography

A descendent of the 1820 Settlers, he was born in **, the son of a well known Cape Town teacher,

He studied at Rhodes University and at Balliol College, Oxford University, on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he completed a D. Phil. thesis called Two pre-Raphaelite Poets in 1954. He also spent time at Harvard University during this period.

Over the years he built up a substantial national reputation with his books on the South African poet and journalist Thomas Pringle and - based on his doctoral studies - an international reputation for his many publications on the Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti ()[1].

His academic publincluding the annotated edition of Rosetti's poem Jan Van Hunks (Issue 3 of Arents Tobacco Collection, 1952), an edited version of The Kelmscott Love Sonnets of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Balkema, 1964) and ultimately the four volume edition of the Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1965-67), on which he worked with Oswald Doughty ().

Wahl became a lecturer in English at Rhodes University and at the start of the 1960s professor and much admired head of the English Department at the University of the Orange Free State in Bloemfontein, where he and his wife inspired numerous scholars, researchers and authors over the years they spent there. His inaugural lecture, deliver in 1964, was titled "No Idle Singer: The Lovers of Gudrun and Sigurd the Volsung".

Wahl married Joan Cicely Haworth in the Anglican Cathedral of St Andrew and St May, Grahamstown, on 2 July, 1955. She was the daughter of Professor Peter Haworth, who had been the Professor of English at what was then known as Rhodes University College, Grahamstown in the 1930s, and she too would became an English lecturer initially in Grahamstown and later in Bloemfontein.

Tragically both Wahl and his wife died by his own hand in Bloemfontein in 1969/70.

Contribution to theatre, film, media and performance

Generally referred to respectfully as "Professor Wahl" by students and as Robert Wahl by friends, colleagues and the press, his term in Bloemfontein was short, but remarkably influential. Besides inspiring a number of his students to further study in the English language and literature, among them a number of teachers, academics and authors , he had a particular interest in theatre and not only supported local theatre and the projects of the dramatic society at the University, and was - alonmg with professor Gaerhard Beukes, an enthusiastic for the founding of a drama department at the university, and served on the original Drama and Theatre Arts Committee that oversaw the activities of the Departmnet founded in under the leadership of the Belgian director and scholar Jo Gevers.

but directly inspired a number of individuals who would later feature in the broader performing arts industry. Among them the actor and arts critic Braam Muller and the theatre researcher, playwright and lecturer Temple Hauptfleisch.

Sources

https://www.1820settlers.com/genealogy/settlerbrowsemarrs.php?name=WAHL&first=

Most widely held works by John Robert Wahl, WorldCat[2]

Michael Green. 2004. Around and about: Memoirs of a South African Newspaperman. New Africa Books, 2004 [3]

http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr2003026501.html

https://somethingovertea.wordpress.com/2020/01/22/pickwick/

Go to the ESAT Bibliography

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