Wallace Kirsop

Wallace Kirsop was born in Chatswood, New South Wales on 4 November 1933. His parents were William Kirsop, an accountant and avid cricketer, and his wife, Doris Ida Kirsop (née Harris).[4]

After attending North Sydney Boys High, he went in 1950 to the University of Sydney from which he graduated in 1955 with first class honours in both French and German.[4]

He undertook research for a doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris, France and in 1960 successfully defended his thesis titled, Clovis Hesteau, sieur de Nuysement, et la littérature alchimique de la fin du XVIe siècle et du début du XVIIe siècle[5] on Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement, a French poet of the Renaissance who wrote several alchemical works.

Having returned to Australia in 1960, Kirsop worked for two years as a Lecturer in French at the University of Sydney. He then moved to Melbourne where he taught French language and literature at Monash University from 1962 until 1998 when he retired. From early in his career at Monash he insisted on a syllabus that moved beyond the normal bounds of French language and literature to include social and cultural history. He also taught advanced undergraduates and postgraduates "reference and physical bibliography"[4] and book history, and he concentrated his research in those fields as well. In his research and teaching he has been an apostle for the French Annales school of historiography and for the Anglo-Saxon school of "new bibliography" (which had been developed by Sir Walter Wilson Greg, Fredson Bowers and Douglas Francis McKenzie), the latter known in France, via his intellectual advocacy, as "bibliographie materielle".[4]

In the years 1968–2002 Kirsop was editor of the "international, peer-reviewed"[6] Australian Journal of French Studies. He was the founding editor of the Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations's Explorations journal[1] and was a board member of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP).[4]

Following his retirement he was appointed Honorary Professorial Fellow at Monash and as at 2018 he was "an Adjunct Professor in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics" at the same university.[3] He taught book history at several Melbourne Rare Book Week events.[7][8] In 2008 he was Honorary Director of Monash University's Centre for the Book.[9] The Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand named one its awards as the "Wallace Kirsop Conference Bursary" as a founding member of the Society and a "distinguished member" since 1969.[10]

He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities[11] in 1980.

• 1973: Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques[12]
• 1999: Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) - University of Sydney[2]
• 2003: Officier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques[12][11]

• Wallace Kirsop - Biography at Monash University (archived copy)
• Articles by Wallace Kirsop in La Trobe Journal