Professor Fred Reid Tribute

It is with great regret we note the passing of historian, novelist, critic, and champion of the visually impaired, Fred Reid.

Fred is the author of many noted works about Thomas Hardy

He was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1937. He went blind at 14 and attended The Royal Blind School in Edinburgh. In 1958 he studied at Edinburgh University, where he studied history and law. He graduated in 1962 with a first class honours in history and went to The Queen's College, Oxford, where he obtained a doctorate in 1967.

Between 1966 and 1997 he lectured in history at the University of Warwick, England, and published a biography of Keir Hardie, essays on Scottish coal miners in the nineteenth century and critical essays on Thomas Hardy. After retirement came the book about his grandfather, In Search of Willie Patterson: a Scottish Soldier in the Age of Imperialism, and The Panopticon.

He served as President of the national Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted from 1972 to 1975 and as a trustee of The Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) from 1974 to 1987 (and again from 1999 to 2006). In 1970 he helped to form The Association of Blind and Partially Sighted Teachers and Students and edited its Bulletin for several years.

The rights of blind people could not be divorced from those of disabled people generally and I served on the executives of The Disablement Income Group and the Disability Alliance.

Among the fruits of this work were several ground breaking government programmes, including:

* disability living allowance

* access to work

* mainstream education for visually impaired children

Some of his publications include:

'Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain, 1892-1939', International Review of Social History, 1966, pp. 19ff
Keir Hardie: the Making of a Socialist (Croom Helm, 1978)
'Art and Ideology in Far from the Madding Crowd', in Thomas Hardy Annual, No. IV, ed. N. Page (London, 1986) pp. 91ff
'THOMAS HARDY HUMANISM AND HISTORY', THE THOMAS HARDY YEAR BOOK, No. 27, Ed. G. Stevens Cox and E. Howitt Toucan Press, 1998) pp. 26ff
'Wayfarers And Seafarers: Ideas of History in the Mayor of Casterbridge', Thomas Hardy Journal, 13,1, (1997) pp. 47ff
‘that must be the poor man!” Alton Locke as a Model for The Poor Man and the Lady’, Hardy Society Journal, 5, 2, 2009.
‘Horace Moule and Thomas Hardy in the Age of Palmerston’, Hardy Society Journal, 6, 2, 2010.
‘The Dorsetshire Labourer’ in Thomas Hardy in Context, ed. Phillip Mallett (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
In Search of Willie Patterson: a Scottish Soldier in the Age of Imperialism (Cualann P., 2002)
The Panopticon: a Novel (unpublished, 2006)
Papers on the Future of Supported Employment for Blind and Partially Sighted People (unpublished, 2005-6)
The Hidden Majority Sweden Germany Romania (2008-2009)
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The Hidden Majority The Netherlands (2010)
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He leaves behind wife, Etta, who is also blind, two sons and several grandchildren.

Any messages to the family or enquiries about the funeral can be sent to Robert Jacob at robert.a.jacob@btinternet.com

An academic tribute can be read here:

You can hear a tribute to Dr Fred Reid on BBC Radio 4 - Link to BBC Radio 4's Tribute to Dr Fred Reid

Click here for a BBC In Touch programme dedicated to the late Professor Fred Reid.