Donald Adamson (born 30 March 1939 in Culcheth, Lancashire, now Cheshire) is a historian, biographer, philosophical writer, textual scholar, literary critic, and translator of French literature. The books he has written include "Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist and Thinker about God", and more recently "The Curriers' Company: A Modern History".
Adamson was born on 30 March 1939 in Culcheth. He was brought up in Lymm, Cheshire, the son of a farmer. From 1949 to 1956, he attended Manchester Grammar School, before becoming a Scholar of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1959, proceeding M.A. in 1963. He was Zaharoff Travelling Scholar of the University of Oxford in 1959-1960. In 1962 he took the degree of B.Litt. Prior to obtaining the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.), he had the privilege of studying under Pierre-Georges Castex at the University of Paris. His thesis, entitled "Balzac and the Visual Arts", was supervised by Jean Seznec of All Souls College, Oxford.
Adamson spent most of his career teaching at university level, although he taught at his alma mater Manchester Grammar School from 1962 to 1964 and then the Lycée Louis-le-Grand from 1964 to 1965. After a brief time at J. Walter Thompson, the advertising firm, from 1968 he taught at St. George's School, in Gravesend, Kent.
In 1969 Adamson joined Goldsmiths' College in the University of London, where he lectured for the next twenty years, doing much to enhance London's standing in French academic circles. In 1971 he became a Recognized Teacher in the Faculty of the 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 from 1983 until 1986.
In 1989 Adamson became a Visiting Fellow in history at Wolfson College, Cambridge. His personal interests include philosophy, the history of religion and genealogy. He is also a passionate art-collector, mainly of English, French and Italian paintings and drawings of the 18th and 19th centuries.
He has been active in the field of public policy on the arts, libraries and museums . By speaking, writing and, through the Bow Group, submitting written and oral evidence to a select committee , he worked for the establishment of the National Heritage Memorial Fund.
He was a judge of the Museum of the Year Awards from 1979 to 1983. He has donated to the National Library of Wales.
Over the course of his distinguished career, Adamson has received a number of honours and been elected as a fellow of several prominent societies, including:
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists
Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques
Knight of Justice of the Order of St John of Jerusalem
Justice of the Peace of the City of London, later Cornwall.
The Genesis of Le Cousin Pons, substantially the text of Adamson's (B.Litt.) 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 done further work on Pascal’s mathematical comprehension of God.
His historical writings fall into three categories. Besides articles on manorial and banking history he has written on the more recent history — and modern workings — of a livery company of the City of London, on travel in England and Wales in the eighteenth century, and a monograph on Spanish art and French Romanticism, in which the opening-up of Spain and Spanish art to travellers from France and other parts of Western Europe, and to enthusiasts in those countries, is explored.
He has completed a study of one year in the life of the artist Oskar Kokoschka , as well as another on his recollections of his friend William Golding .
According to Donald Adamson, literature does not necessarily fulfil any social mission or purpose; yet, as with Émile Zola or D. H. Lawrence, there is no reason why it should not 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 philosophy of life which is one of profound negativism.
All too often, in Donald Adamson’s view, people go through their lives without living or seeking any belief. This, for him, is the supreme attractiveness of Blaise Pascal, whose philosophy is of a unique kind: grounded in the vagaries of human nature; not essentially seeking to convince by mathematics; and foreshadowing Søren Kierkegaard and twentieth-century existentialism in its appeal to human experience.
Adamson has written numerous articles, as well as eleven books. In addition to the publications listed below, he is currently working on a biography of A. L. Rowse.
Translations
1970: The Black Sheep (trans. Balzac's La Rabouilleuse)
1976: Ursule Mirouët (trans. Balzac)
1993: Bed 29 & Other Stories: an anthology of 26 of Maupassant's short stories
Other books
1966: The Genesis of "Le Cousin Pons"
1971: Dusty Heritage
1971: T. S. Eliot: a Memoir (ed.)
1974: The House of Nell Gwyn: the fortunes of the Beauclerk family, 1670-1974 (jointly with Peter Beauclerk Dewar)
1980: A Rescue Policy for Museums
1981: Balzac: Illusions Perdues. London: Grant & Cutler
1988: Les Romantiques français devant la peinture espagnole
(1990: republished as Interprètes français de la peinture espagnole à l'époque romantique)
1995: Blaise Pascal: mathematician, physicist, and thinker about God
1996: Rides Round Britain: the travel journals of John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington (ed.)
2000: The Curriers' Company: a modern history
2001: Balzac and the Tradition of the European Novel
Minor contributions
1991: presented Old Goriot in Everyman Books
2005: "Pascal's Views on Mathematics and the Divine"
