1987/8

Our President in 1987/8 was:

Prof. David Hewitt MA, PhD, FEA, FRSE

Professor David Hewitt proposed the Toast to Sir Walter at our 80th Annual Dinner on Friday 10th March 1989 in the Upper Library Hall, University of Edinburgh

David Hewitt (MA, PhD, FEA, FRSE) is Professor in Scottish Literature. He is editor-in-chief of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, the first scholarly edition of Scott's fiction, which is published in thirty volumes by Edinburgh University Press and was completed in 2015. The Edition has revolutionised ideas of Scott and his achievement and has generated, and continues to generate, many exciting ideas and opportunities for postgraduate research.

Professor Hewitt heads with Dr Alison Lumsden the Walter Scott Research Centre, which exists to conduct and to promote research into Scott and his works, his intellectual context, and the ways in which his work was used by other writers, other arts, business, and politics, particularly in the nineteenth century. Its interests are interdisciplinary, and its scope is international.

Professor Hewitt has wide interests in Enlightenment, Romantic, and Scottish literature, and particularly in Burns, Scott, and Byron, as well as Scottish language, and in textual and bibliographical research. On completing the Edition, he will embark on an AHRC-supported project with Dr Barbara Fennell to investigate the political implications of the representation of dialect speech in Scotland and Ireland 1700-1900.

He has supervised many PhD theses on a range of authors including Jane Austen, James Beattie, Robert Burns, Oliver Goldsmith, James Hogg, J. G. Lockhart, and Walter Scott. He will welcome further enquiries.