Alexander Augustine Parker was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1908. He was educated at Hawkesyard School (later Blackfriars School, Laxton) and then studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Between 1933 and 1939 he was a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. In 1939 he was appointed Lecturer and Head of the Department of Spanish at Aberdeen University, and then in 1949 came the appointment of Reader in Spanish at Aberdeen. Parker became Professor of Spanish at the University of London, King's College, in 1953, and then in 1963 he was awarded the Chair of Hispanic Studies at Edinburgh University. Prior to that, in 1960-1961, he had been seconded to the University College of the West Indies. Between 1970 and 1978, Parker was Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Texas, at Austin. His publications includeLiterature and the delinquent: the picaresque novel in Spain and Europe 1599-1753(1967), andThe philosophy of love in Spanish literature 1480-1680(1985). Professor Alexander Augustine Parker died on 23 November 1989.