Paul Edwards (literary scholar)
Paul Geoffrey Edwards (31 July 1926 – 10 May 1992) was a wide-ranging literary scholar at the University of Edinburgh, appreciated for his "adventurous and unorthodox teaching". As a scholar of black history and literature, Edwards's work on Olaudah Equiano "helped to establish Equiano as a key figure in African and black literature in general." Edwards also wrote on Romanticism, and collaborated with Hermann Pálsson in translations of the Icelandic sagas and other books on the literature of medieval Iceland. Life. Paul Edwards, from Birmingham, studied English at Durham University and then Celtic and Icelandic  at Cambridge University. He was the Editor of Palatinate during his time at Durham, working alongside Harold Evans. After completing his education he worked in West Africa for nine years, teaching literature in Ghana and Sierra Leone. The demand of his African students for African literature propelled his encounter with Equiano. Edwards joined the staff of Edinburgh University in 1963. Encouraged by Chinua Achebe, and helped by the historian of Sierra Leone Christopher Fyfe, in 1967 Edwards published an abridged edition of Equiano's autobiographical "Narrative" in Heinemann's African Writers Series, under the title "Equiano's Travels". He subsequently  published a facsimile version of the "Narrative", and another edited version under the title "The Life of Olaudah Equiano". At the University of Edinburgh Edwards introduced a final year Honours option on "Caribbean and West African Literature", which he taught with Kenneth Ramchand. He became Reader in English Literature, and was subsequently awarded a personal chair as professor of English and African Literature at Edinburgh. He died 10 May 1992. In March 1994 a conference entitled "Africans and Caribbeans in Britain: Writing, History, and Society" was held in his memory at Edinburgh's Centre of African Studies. A collection of  essays in his memory appeared in 1998.