Professor Thomas McFarland

Thomas McFarland, who died in September 2011, aged 84, was one of the greatest Coleridgeans and a most loyal member of the Conference community. His Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition (OUP, 1969) remains one of the indispensable works on Coleridge's thought; Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin: Wordsworth, Coleridge and Modalities of Fragmentation (Princeton University Press, 1992) contains seminal essays on Wordsworth and Coleridge. McFarland's most memorable lectures at the conference included vibrant instalments of his commentary on Coleridge's 'Logosophia', destined for The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 15: Opus Maximum (Princeton, 2002). As a lecturer, a walking companion, a conversationist, and a friend, Thomas McFarland is greatly missed.  He is pictured at right above Buttermere and Crummock, and below on Coniston Old Man with Jack Stillinger, Paul Magnuson, Frederick Burwick, Bill Ruddick, Robert Barth, Paul Sheats and others at the 1988 conference, and on Great Gable in 1989, with Richard Gravil. A Festschrift for Tom, The Coleridge Connection (1990) with contributions by Ian Wylie, Nicola Trott, Nicholas Roe, Molly Lefebure, Grevel Lindop, Tim Fulford, James Engell, Frederick Burwick, Elinor Shaffer, Anthony Harding, Jonathan Bate, H W Piper, Robert Barth and John Beer, remains available as an ebook.