My husband, Neil Cornwell, who has died aged 77 from Parkinson’s disease, was an internationally known Russian scholar. He was professor of Russian and comparative literature at Bristol University from 1993 until his retirement as emeritus professor in 2007, and was the author of several important works, one of which, The Reference Guide to Russian Literature (1998), co-edited with Nicole Christian, is the standard reference work on Russian writers and their works.

He also published the comparative literature studies The Literary Fantastic (1990) and The Absurd in Literature (2006), and numerous literary translations. In 1980, he founded the journal Irish Slavonic Studies and edited it until 1986. He also served as Russian editor of The Literary Encyclopaedia online.