Pete Messent, Emeritus Professor of Modern American Literature in the Department of American Studies at the University of Nottingham, recently passed away after a short illness.

Pete took a BA degree in American Studies at the University of Manchester (1966-9) and went on to an MPhil research degree (1969-71) on humour in American fiction. After lecturing at Manchester for a year, he took up a post in 1973 at the University of Nottingham, teaching American Literature. Apart from one year spent teaching as a Fulbright Scholar in 1977-8 in Sacramento, California, he remained at Nottingham until his retirement in 2011 (37 years in total).

He taught the whole range of American literature at undergraduate and postgraduate level, as well as supervising a wide range of PhD topics. He was an indispensable and essential figure in a fast-developing department, being promoted to full Professor in 1999, and eventually taking on the thankless role of Head of Department.  Pete was a very popular and approachable teacher, who took students and their needs seriously, giving generously of his time and expertise and often championing their cause, when he felt they were not being treated fairly. His many publications on American literature range from the occult, crime fiction, and Ernest Hemingway, to applications of narrative theory and theories of liminality. He will be best remembered, however, for his contribution to scholarship on Mark Twain. He was an internationally respected authority on Twain, not least among the community of Twain scholars, and published dozens of articles and several books, including The Cambridge Introduction to Mark Twain (2007), The Short Works of Mark Twain: A Critical Study (2001), and New Readings of the American Novel: Narrative Theory and its Application (1990)

His last book (Winner of both the EASA American Studies Network Book Prize and BAAS Annual Book Prize), was an exploration of male friendship in the nineteenth century, Mark Twain and Male Friendship: The Twichell, Howells and Rogers Friendships (2009). He also edited a collection of Joseph Twichell’s Civil War Letters.

Pete played an active part in the international development of American Studies, participating in Erasmus, BAAS and EASS meetings. He was liked and respected throughout the academic community in Europe for his warmth and generosity as well as his impressive intellectual qualities and painstaking scholarship. In the United States, too, he was active, and was one of the first members of the American Literature Association, and

He died peacefully in a hospice in Nottingham, after being diagnosed with cancer of the kidney, and is survived by two children and two stepchildren.