Cecil Y. Lang

Editor of Swinburne, Tennyson and Arnold

"Ask Cecil Lang." That injunction has been heard over decades in the halls of academe whenever a serious question concerning textual editing arose. For it was early in his career that Cecil Y. Lang established a system and philosophy of editorial principles that transcended anything that preceded him.

His editorial skill, eloquence, charm and instinctive, unparalleled wit became evident in his first major labour, Algernon Charles Swinburne's Letters (published in six volumes, 1959-62), and continued to win unreserved praise with The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson (three volumes, 1982-90) and The Letters of Matthew Arnold (six volumes, 1996-2002). Along the way he published New Writings by Swinburne (1964), The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Circle (1968) and other shorter works.

Cecil Yelverton Lang was born in Walstonburg, North Carolina, in 1920. He graduated at Duke University and took a doctorate at Harvard, where he specialised in 19th-century British literature. He then went to Yale, Claremont (California) Graduate School, Syracuse University (New York) and the University of Chicago, before moving to the University of Virginia, where he remained for the rest of his professional life, retiring after 25 years as Professor Emeritus in 1991. He was sometimes spoken of as the highest-paid English professor in the land.

I knew Cecil Lang for over 50 years. We first met in 1948, when, after serving four years as an officer in the air force in the Pacific during the Second World War, he returned to Harvard to complete his studies. His small physical stature was no impairment; what struck us all most about him was his overpowering eloquence and erudition. I remember him wrapped in a colourful, padded dressing gown serving hot chocolate and gingerbread cake to fellow graduates in his rooms at Conant Hall after the evening's work was done, reigning over the sharp repartee that invariably erupted on subjects ranging from Le Roman de la Rose to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet.

I also remember meeting his boat on the New York docks when, in 1951, he returned from a year in England, to help him cart off a long crate full of Swinburne letters. We called it Swinburne's coffin. The following year I met another boat, this time to welcome him and his attractive new bride, Violette Guérin-Lésé, a Parisian lawyer.

Lang was a keen and determined collector. He amassed a huge quantity of Gandaran sculpture, which he displayed in his large Charlottesville home. When retirement was imminent and the Langs planned to move to somewhat more modest quarters, he sold the works at Sotheby's in New York. In the mid-Sixties, when he was on sabbatical leave in London, he grew interested in the watercolourist-etchers James McBey and Martin Hardie and acquired many of their drawings and etchings. He also owned a collection of over 900 Vanity Fair prints of Victorian and Edwardian public figures, which he gave to the University of Virginia library.

The Langs were warm hosts. They both liked cooking and travelling, often taking up residence in London and Paris. They particularly enjoyed the opera.

Morton N. Cohen

Cecil Yelverton Lang, English scholar and editor: born Walstonburg, North Carolina 18 September 1920; Professor, Syracuse University 1959-65; Professor, University of Chicago 1965-67; Professor, Center for Advanced Studies, University of Virginia 1967-70, Commonwealth Professor of English 1970-84, John Stewart Bryan Professor 1984-91, Professor Emeritus 1991-2003; FRSL 1991; married 1952 Violette Guérin-Lésé (one son); died Charlottesville, Virginia 15 February 2003.