to the attention of Professor Donald J. Gordon of Reading University who offered Fletcher a lecturership on the strength of it in spite of his lack of a degree. Fletcher had a distinguished career at Reading, gaining a PhD, his only degree, with a thesis on the history of the little magazine in 1965, and progressing to a professorship in 1978. He was a generous benefactor of the library and its fledgling archive. He married Loraine in 1965, and captained an amateur cricket team. Fletcher frequently lectured in America. In 1982, after taking early retirement from Reading, he took up a post at Arizona State University. His last years were clouded by ill-health although he remained mentally alert to the end, dying in hospital in Birmingham in 1988. He left a wife and two daughters. Reception The scholar John Stokes wrote that Fletcher already had his own style while taking his PhD, and that he and his supervisor, Donald Gordon, shared a belief in W. B. Yeats's greatness, and that "strange beliefs do not have to be believed to be thought interesting, or to be an essential tool for the understanding of great works of literature". They collaborated on a "pioneering" book on Yeats. Books By Fletcher 1953: The Complete Poems of Lionel Johnson (edited) (Unicorn Press) 1961: W.B. Yeats: Images of a Poet, with D. J. Gordon (Manchester University Press) 1967: Romantic Mythologies (Routledge) 1971: Walter Pater (British Council/Longmans) 1971: Meredith Now: Some Critical Essays (Routledge) 1979: Decadence and the 1890s (Holmes & Meier) 1981: A Catalogue of the Imagist Poets, with Wallace Martin (AMS Press) 1987: Aubrey Beardsley (Twayne) 1990: Rediscovering Herbert Horne: Poet, Architect, Typographer, Art Historian (ELT Press) About Fletcher 1990: Essays & Poems: in memory of Ian Fletcher, 1920-1988 (University of North Carolina) 2009: Ian Fletcher: Poet and Scholar (Shoestring Press) References External links Papers of Ian Fletcher – Archives held at University of Reading Special Collections Services 1920 births 1988 deaths English literary critics British Army personnel of World War II British expatriates in Egypt British expatriates in the United States Arizona State University faculty People from Streatham