Professor Oswald Doughty (1889-1975) was born at Kingston-upon-Hull in Yorkshire. He was educated privately and at Kingston-upon-Hull College. He graduated M.A. at Durham in 1918 and B.Litt. at Oxford in 1922. After a short spell as a schoolmaster he joined the staff of University College, London, soon becoming a senior lecturer. In 1929 he accepted the post as Arderne Professor of English Literature at U.C.T., which position he held until his retirement as Professor Emeritus in 1954. He was the first specialist Professor of Literature at U.C.T. In 1949 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London. He became internationally known as a leading authority on the Victorian painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his: 'A Victorian Romantic' being the definitive biography of Rossetti. It was the "Book of the month" in London when it was first published in 1949. He also edited a standard edition of Rossetti's poems (1957) and, with Professor J.R. Wahl, a standard edition of the 'Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti' (1965-1967). He also published books and articles on the lyric poets of the 18th century and spent the last years of his life on a life of Coleridge, which has not been published. Quite apart from, and perhaps as a relief from, his literary bent he published "Early diamond days in South Africa" in 1963, a study of life on the diamond fields. He married a Frenchwoman, Mlle Henriette Spitz, of Paris in 1923. They had one daughter, Odile.