Oxford University's Prof Alan Raitt, a world authority on 19th century French literature, has died aged 75.

Born in Morpeth, Northumberland, in 1930, he began studying modern languages at Magdalen College in 1948. While an undergraduate, he won the Heath Harrison prize, the university's most prestigious award for languages, in both French and German.

After graduating with a first in 1951, he began a DPhil under the supervision of Austin Gill. His thesis, completed five years later, became his first book, Villiers de I'Isle-Adam et le mouvement symboliste. He was a Fellow of Magdalen from 1953 to 1955, after which he moved to Exeter College as Fellow and Lecturer in French.

He remained there for 11 years, and was the college's sub-rector between 1953 and 1959.

In 1966, he succeeded Mr Gill as Fellow in French at Magdalen, he was made Reader in 1979 and given a personal chair in 1992.

In 1998, the Clarendon Press published The Process of Art, a book in his honour, with essays by students and friends, among them novelist Julian Barnes, a former student with whom Raitt shared his fascination with Flaubert. He retired from Magdalen in 1997.

Prof Raitt, who lived in North Oxford, held a season ticket at Oxford United and went to most home matches.

He also took a recent interest in the fortunes of Chelsea FC, because the team's manager Jos Mourinho, shared his nationality with Prof Raitt's wife Lia, a Portuguese scholar whom he married in 1974.

He was proud of his daughters by his first marriage to Janet Taylor, Suzanne, a literary critic, and Claire, a lawyer. Prof Raitt was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1971, and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1992.

In 1987, he was awarded the Grand Prix du Rayonnement de la langue francaise from the Acadmie Francaise and made Officier de l'Ordre des Palmes Acadmiques, in which he was promoted to Commandeur.