University of Wales Lampeter - Department of English -
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Published on: 10/1/2008
Last Visited: 2/6/2009
Announcing the Retirement of Mr Peter Miles
The English Department regrets to announce the retirement of Mr Peter Miles.
Peter was appointed at Lampeter in 1973, and during a long and productive career as a lecturer he developed probably the widest range of teaching in the English Department; he was able to offer engaging and original lectures and seminar courses on material ranging from the Renaissance to the modern novel.
His commitment to the culture of the working class in relation to literature has stood out, however, and his module ,Writing and the Working Class' is unique in British universities.
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Through his publications Peter has contributed substantially to scholarship on the English novel from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and to bibliography, textual criticism, book history, cultural history, and the politics of printing and publishing.
Along with his long-term interests and important contributions to "mainstream" scholarship on eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth-century literature and literature of the working class, Peter has taken the critical editor's methodical task of unraveling obscure allusions and explaining sources and analogues, and greatly extended it in critical essays, while retaining a firm belief that discovery could be serendipitous and surprising.
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Other essays by Peter on Smollett have encompassed such wide-ranging themes as bookhood, madness, topography, and travel.
Peter has combined a deep and serious scholarly interest in books (as a bibliographer and collector of books) with a somewhat wicked and sometimes irreverent (but never malevolent) sense of humour.
Immensely erudite, Peter knows much more than he would probably give himself credit for; he is modest about himself and his accomplishments, but his election to Fellowship of the English Association was a measure of the regard in which his work is held.
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Peter also wrote a study guide on Wuthering Heights, and for many years acted as Reviews Editor and as a contributor to The Powys Review.
His extensive reviewing in journals such as Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography, ANQ, The Book Collector, Eighteenth-Century Life, New Welsh Review, Notes and Queries, Style, and Trivium, extended the purview of his core scholarship into areas like critical and cultural theory.
Any portrait of Peter would be incomplete without adding that as a person and colleague, he has been unusually conscientious in both senses of the word , he would take the utmost trouble over anything he undertook to do (even if nobody would have been any the wiser if he hadn't), and he really has tried to do the right thing by others, even when the process could be wearisome.
Moreover one colleague has described Peter as perhaps the most able person known to them in the profession, and there is no doubt that Peter has served his colleagues extremely well in a variety of roles; his adept, astute handling of complex matters inspired confidence.
His experience, patience and reliability as a guide to the intricacies and procedures of academic life have encouraged somewhat intimidated PhD candidates to feel unequivocally that they can belong to the "academic club", and junior colleagues to realise their full membership thereof.
As Head of Department and in all situations where he has taken a lead, Peter has been wise in decision-making and ever considerate towards those for whom he has been responsible.
He will be sorely and justly missed.
The Department of English hopes that he will continue to pursue some areas of his research and to collect books.
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