GRIMSLEY, Ronald 1915-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born October 19, 1915, in Leicester, England; died August 11, 2003, in Bristol, England. Educator and author. Grimsley was a professor of French and a noted expert on Jean-Jacques Rousseau. After completing his undergraduate work in French at University College in Leicester, he had begun graduate studies at Oxford University when World War II began. He served in the Royal Artillery and the Intelligence Corps in Europe; and with the war over, he completed a D.Phil. at Oxford in 1948 while also earning a Licence-es-Lettres from the University of Lille. The first part of his academic career was spent at University College of North Wales, where he began as a lecturer and moved his way up to university reader. In 1964 he joined Bristol University as a professor of French; he was head of the department and professor of French language and literature from 1966 until his 1981 retirement as professor emeritus. Grimsley was not only interested in literature, but also in topics ranging from philosophy to history. He was the author or editor of a dozen books, including Existentialist Thought (1955; second edition, 1960), SØren Kierkegaard and French Literature: Eight Comparative Studies (1966), From Montesquieu to Laclos: Studies on the French Enlightenment (1974), and many books on Rousseau, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A Study in Self-Awareness (1961), Rousseau and the Religious Quest (1968), The Philosophy of Rousseau (1973), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1983).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Independent (London, England), August 19, 2003, p. 16.

Times (London, England), August 27, 2003.