Raymond Bruce Mitchell (8 January 1920 - 30 January 2010) was a scholar of Old English.
Mitchell was born in Lismore, New South Wales. He won a free place at the University of Melbourne but was unable to take it up and instead after leaving school at 15, worked as a student teacher while studying part-time. He earned a general Arts degree.[1]
He was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1940 and served as an intelligence officer in the Australian Imperial Force from 1941 to 1946. He then ran a printing company before returning to the university, again part-time while working as a gardener, builders' labourer and railway porter, and tutoring English at the university. He took Firsts in English Language and Literature in 1948 and in Comparative Philology in 1952.[1]
He entered Merton College, Oxford, on a scholarship in 1952, the same year he married Mollie Miller,[2] who had accompanied him from Australia. They received permission to be married from Mitchell's supervisor, J. R. R. Tolkien.[3] He received a doctorate in 1959 with a thesis entitled Subordinate Clauses in Old English Poetry.[1] [4] In 1986 he gained the degree of D.Litt. (Oxon) for his contribution to Old English studies.
Mitchell was a Fellow and a Tutor at St Edmund Hall, Oxford from 1954 to 1987, and after retirement was elected an emeritus fellow.[1] [5]
Though he spent his entire life in Oxford since age 32, he never lost his Australian accent, and displayed his heritage by having an Australian flag and a eucalyptus tree in his garden.
His specialty was Old English language and literature and particularly Beowulf; his textbooks on Old English language are considered classics in the field, as is his edition of Beowulf, which he published with Fred C. Robinson.[6] His "magisterial" and "phenomenal" book on Old English syntax is still the standard reference work in the field.[3]
Mitchell was Terry Jones's tutor and believed he was the inspiration for Monty Python's "Bruces" sketch; he was disappointed to find out Eric Idle had written it and it was not based on him.[1]
Book: Walmsley, John. Inside Old English: Essays in Honour of Bruce Mitchell. Wiley-Blackwell. Oxford, Malden. 2006. 19. 978-1-4051-1483-7.