Helen Gardner (critic) Cambridge offered Gardner the new chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, but she declined, in part because she had heard that the university's first choice, C.S. Lewis, had changed his mind about refusing the position. In 1966, she became Merton Professor of English literature in the University of Oxford, the first woman to hold this chair. Her specialist areas were T. S. Eliot, the metaphysical poets, Milton and religious poetry, with many essays published on these subjects, as well as on literary criticism itself. She edited "The New Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1950" (1972) and "The Metaphysical Poets". She
Peter Hunt (literary critic) said of fantasy is that it has nothing to do with reality." This book is actually a complete departure from Hunt's usual concern of defining children's literature, and possibly suggests a change in what subject matter he will choose to study in the future. Peter Hunt (literary critic) Peter Hunt (born 1945) is a British scholar who is Professor Emeritus in Children's Literature at Cardiff University. Hunt's books include works of criticism, novels, and stories for younger children. The Children's Literature courses that he ran at Cardiff were the first to treat children's literature as a subject of academic study