28
March
2022
|
12:40
Europe/London

Obituary: DG Scragg

The Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies reflects with sadness on the life of Don Scragg, who passed away on October 26, 2021.

Don was for many years a key member of the English Department of The University of Manchester (in its various manifestations) where he was ultimately Professor of Anglo-Saxon Studies. He was founding director of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies and was also involved in the establishment of TOEBI, the association of Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland, for whom he served as Chair and long-time President. He established, and for many years ran, the prestigious annual Toller Lecture in Old English studies, which attracted leading researchers in the field.

Don’s numerous publications include some of the most important scholarship on anonymous homilies in the premodern period; editions of The Battle of Maldon (Manchester, 1981); The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts (EETS, 1992); and A History of English Spelling (Manchester, 1975). More recently, he had been working on scribal hands in Old English manuscripts, and produced A Conspectus of Scribal Hands Writing English 960-1100 (Brewer, 2012) that appeared in a second, fuller edition, weeks before his death. He submitted this book with the help of his son Tim, thereby remaining an active scholar to the end.

Don was a mature student who had first had a job at Chester Zoo and did National Service in the RAF. He had initially wanted to work with animals and he maintained this interest and his connection to Chester Zoo all his life. But after his BA degree he was recruited to the department in Manchester by Professor GL Brook. Later he was joined there by his wife Leah Scragg, the Shakespeare scholar, who he met when they were students.

Former students still remember Don’s brilliant teaching, his rigorous and engaging lectures and seminars, and his challenge to each student to be the very best that they could be. Though it was no longer the fashion at Manchester, in the 1970s Don still lectured in a gown and had a reputation as formidably scholarly (at a time when all students in English had to take the History of the English Language course). But Don could also amuse when he wanted to: his lecture on ‘f**k and other obscenities’ was the stuff of legend among students. He built an international reputation in the study of Old English and a significant number of his MA and doctoral students are themselves now well-established scholars. He was a founding member of the Richard Rawlinson Center Advisory Board at Western Michigan University. There, at Kalamazoo, he regularly presented his scholarly work at the International Medieval Congress (where he was just as renowned for his energetic moves at the dance that concluded each conference).

Don is missed by everyone in Medieval Studies at Manchester, past and present. He is survived by Leah, their son Tim and his wife, and a young grandson, Ben.

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