PEERS, EDGAR ALLISON

Hispanic scholar and authority on Spanish mysticism; b. Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, England, May 7, 1891; d. Liverpool, Dec. 21, 1952. He was educated at Dartford Grammar School and Christ's College, Cambridge. After a distinguished university career, he taught modern languages. In 1920 he was appointed to the Gilmour Chair of Spanish in Liverpool University, a post he held until his death.

Professor Peers made an important contribution to Spanish studies, in both teaching and research. He organized vacation courses in London and Liverpool and eventually in Spain. He founded the Institute of Hispanic Studies and its Bulletin and was for some time educational director of the Hispanic Council. He was a brilliant but also a patient teacher who took a personal interest in his pupils. He published a definitive annotated translation of the works of SS. teresa of avila and john of the cross, based on the critical text of P. Silverio de S. Teresa

and on discussions with the latter and Dom Edmund Gourdon, Prior of Miraflores charterhouse (Burgos). Peers (himself an Anglican) produced numerous other works on Spanish mysticism. He wrote ably on the Spanish Civil War, and under the name of Bruce Truscot produced several books calling attention to the potentialities of the modern "red-brick" universities.

Bibliography: e. a. peers, Studies of the Spanish Mystics, 3v. (London 1927–60). Translations. Complete Works of St. John of the Cross, 3 v. (London 1934–35; rev. ed. London 1953). Complete Works of St. Teresa, 3 v. (London 1946); Letters of St. Teresa (Westminster, MD 1950). bernardino of laredo, Ascent of Mount Sion (London 1952). Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 30 (1953) 1–20, memorial number with bibliog.

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