Karl Miller

Born: August 2, 1931; Died: September 24, 2014

Karl Fergus Connor Miller, who has died aged 83, was obsessed with doubles, duality and split personality in literature and in life. For him key sources were James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner and Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, both of which he appeared to have off by heart.

But that could be said of many books, for Miller was the consummate man-of-letters and a literary editor of genius. Early on, as he noted in his autobiography, Rebecca's Vest, he wished to think and write about Scottish writers and the Scottish past.

He had two dates to which he was particularly drawn, 1630 and 1800, and two locations to which he invariably returned, Edinburgh and the Borders, both of which he described with the kind of longing that is a symptom of exile.

Though London was where Miller lived for most of his adult life, it was the Scotland of his youth that he found irresistible. Like Muriel Spark, whom he admired hugely, it formed him, making him a steely, sympathetic, unsentimental editor and writer who was as charming and encouraging as he was challenging.

He was born in 1931, possibly with a blue pencil in his hand. Even before he emerged from the womb, his parents' marriage had dissolved.

His father, an uncelebrated painter who had studied at Glasgow School of Art, remained in London, where he was to live like a Bohemian never far from the breadline.

His mother, an ardent socialist, delivered her son in Edinburgh where, in a household dominated by women, he was to spend the next 20 years. Brought up in Gilmerton, Miller was aware even as young boy of the area's celebrity connections, most notably with Walter Scott. "This was a storied countryside, which gave onto others...," he wrote. "Not all the stories were by Walter Scott, or about Scott, but many of them were."

He read voraciously and played football when he did not. He was as passionate about the beautiful game as he was about literature, and waxed poetical over the great players. He was a fan of Tottenham Hotspur and was long a friend of its cultured captain, Danny Blanchflower.

At the Royal High School, Miller encountered Hector McIvor, a young teacher whom his student later compared to "one of the leaders of the Irish rebellion".

Together, they edited the school magazine, Miller's first such foray into the world of journalism.

Dylan Thomas, then a rising star, was invited by McIvor to Edinburgh. Later, the Welshman was shown a few of Miller's poems and guessed, incorrectly, that one of them had been written by "a far older boy with a taste for Scotch".

But it was McIvor who left the greatest impression. "Poetry, for him, was very much a matter of lines, lines to quote, lines to conjure with, lines to chalk up on the blackboard, lines you could borrow and adapt..." Miller might have referring to himself.

In 1951, after national service, he arrived at Cambridge to read English. He worked on Granta, the university's magazine, which brought him into contact with the poets Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn, the historian Eric Hobsbawm and the theatre director, Jonathan Miller, who became his brother-in-law. He was impressed by FR Leavis who at the time was lobbing grenades at the grandees of the literary establishment. While some regarded Miller as an acolyte of the exacting critic it encouraged others to offer him a berth.

Thus in turn he became literary editor of the Spectator and the New Statesman and editor of the now defunct and much missed Listener.

In 1979, during a strike which halted publication of the Times Literary Supplement, he founded the London Review of Books, which he edited until 1992. Reflecting on the literary scene, he wrote: "Jealousy and hostility have always been aspects of authorship, and what it has to fear. I couldn't fail to notice, when I started editing, that, for many writers, all times are hard times."

Miller's own books are traceable to his roots. His first was Cockburn's Millennium, which appeared in 1975, and was regarded by Hugh Trevor-Roper as "an original and scholarly study" of Henry Cockburn, the 18th century judge and author of the classic Memorials of His Time. It was awarded the James Tait Black memorial prize.

A book on Robert Burns followed, after which, came Doubles, in which the Ettrick Shepherd figured prominently. Miller had more to say about him, however, and, in 2003, produced Electric Shepherd: A Likeness of James Hogg. "Here," he wrote, "was a man of feeling who used to bite the balls off sheep ... He was thought to be a barbarian, flattered for that, while also commanded to be delicate, by those who belonged to the strongholds of refinement, of books and social advancement, north and south of the Border."

From 1974 to 1992, Miller served as Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. But it was in Grub Street rather than among the groves of academe that he was truly in his element. His circle was wide and admiring and included Ian Hamilton, Clive James, Beryl Bainbridge, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Blake Morrison, Seamus Heaney, Andrew O'Hagan and many others.

His last book was Tretower to Clyro, a collection of essays. In one of them, he recalls being satirised in a novel by Alan Hollinghurst as Professor Ettrick. Miller must have liked that for it is a reminder of the constancy of his interests and of his loyalty to first loves.

He is survived by his wife Jane and their children.