David Wright literary papers

Dr David Graham Wright (1952-2008) was an author, dedicated scholar, and a skilled reader of James Joyce. Wright majored in English at the University of Canterbury (BA, 1972, MA (hons) 1973). In 1974 he taught two terms as a junior lecturer at Victoria University before being awarded a Commonwealth scholarship to the University of Toronto. While there he completed a PhD thesis on autobiography in James Joyce and W. B. Yeats in 1978, winning the A.P. Woodhouse Prize for the best thesis in English.

David was appointed a lecturer in English at the University of Auckland in 1979 and was promoted to senior lecturer in 1985. His scholarship focussed on Anglo-Irish literature, publishing The Characters of Joyce (1983), Yeats’ Myth of Self: The Autobiographical Prose (1988), and Ironies of Ulysses (1992) and articles and reviews on Yeats, Joyce, Greene, Beckett and Pinter. Wright’s book chapter 'Joyce and New Zealand: biography, censorship and influence' was published only two days after his death.