Ian Vaughan Kenneth Ousby (26 June 1947 – 6 August 2001) was a British historian, author and editor.
[2] While at Harvard, Ousby was awarded the Howard Mumford Jones Prize for the best doctoral thesis of the year.
An "intense dislike of organisations, as well as strong and divergent specialist interests", resulted in him leaving the University of Maryland in 1983 to become a freelance writer.
[2] The subjects of his books ranged from detective fiction, with Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle to military history with The Road to Verdun and Occupation: the ordeal of France, 1940–1944,[4] which was awarded the Edith McLeod Literary Prize and the Stern Silver PEN for Non-Fiction in 1998.
[2] His most noted work was as editor of The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, which was first published in 1988 and republished in various forms in 1993, 1996 and 1998.