David I. Masson

David Irvine Masson (6 November 1915 – 27 February 2007) was a British science-fiction writer and librarian. Biography Born in Edinburgh, Masson came from a distinguished family of academics and thinkers. His father, Sir Irvine Masson, was a Professor of Chemistry at Durham and Vice-Chancellor at Sheffield, his grandfather, Sir David O. Masson, emigrated to Australia and became Professor of Chemistry at Melbourne while his great-grandfather David M. Masson was Professor of English Literature at Edinburgh, wrote a biography of John Milton and was a friend of Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. It was no great surprise, therefore, when Masson himself began a career in higher education. Following his graduation from Merton College, Oxford, with a degree in English language and literature he took on the post of assistant librarian at the University of Leeds in 1938. Except for a stint in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Second World War from 1940–46, Masson remained a librarian for the rest of his working life.