Robert Guy Howarth

Who was Robert Guy Howarth?

Robert Guy Howarth was an Australian scholar, literary critic and poet.

Born in Tenterfield, NSW, his father was a school teacher. After education at Fort Street High School, the University of Sydney and Oxford University, and editing several books, he was appointed lecturer in English at Sydney University in 1933.

He was an encouraging and generous teacher and colleague, and established a reputation as an expert in Elizabethan tragedy and Restoration comedy. He introduced modernist and contemporary writers, and Australian writers, into the curriculum. In 1939 he persuaded the Australian English Association to publish under his editorship the journal Southerly. Through his role editing Southerly, and as a literary critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, he influenced the development of Australian literature. He also edited or wrote introductions for works by Hugh McCrae and Joseph Furphy, William Hay's The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans and, with John Thompson and Kenneth Slessor, The Penguin Book of Australian Verse.

In 1948 Howarth was appointed reader in English literature. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom, and was a foundation member of the Australian Humanities Research Council, a member of the advisory board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund and president of the Sydney branch of the English Association. Disappointed at not being appointed to the Challis Chair in English Literature in 1955, he accepted the Arderne chair of English literature at the University of Cape Town.