Richard Boris Ford known as Boris Ford, was a literary critic, writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

 and educationist.

Early life

The son of an Indian Army

British Indian Army

The British Indian Army, officially simply the Indian Army, was the principal army of the British Raj in India before the partition of India in 1947...

 officer, Brigadier G.N. Ford, and his Russian wife Ekaterina, Ford was a boy chorister at King's College, Cambridge

King's College, Cambridge

King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....

 and was educated at Gresham's School

Gresham's School

Gresham’s School is an independent coeducational boarding school in Holt in North Norfolk, England, a member of the HMC.The school was founded in 1555 by Sir John Gresham as a free grammar school for forty boys, following King Henry VIII's dissolution of the Augustinian priory at Beeston Regis...

 and Downing College

Downing College, Cambridge

Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1800 and currently has around 650 students.- History :...

, Cambridge. At Downing he studied under F.R. Leavis.

Career

After Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, Ford joined the army, and from 1940 until the end of the Second World War was the officer commanding the Middle East School of Artistic Studies.

Later he worked at the United Nations Secretariat

United Nations Secretariat

The United Nations Secretariat is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations and it is headed by the United Nations Secretary-General, assisted by a staff of international civil servants worldwide. It provides studies, information, and facilities needed by United Nations bodies for...

 in its early years, was the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

's head of schools broadcasting, was Education Secretary to the Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...

, edited important academic journals and anthologies (see sections below) and became Professor of Education at Sussex University and later at Bristol.

He was a follower of Leavis but had a stormy relationship with him and his wife Q. D.

Q. D. Leavis

Queenie Dorothy Leavis , née Roth, was an English literary critic and essayist.Born in Edmonton, England, she wrote about the historical sociology of reading and the development of the English, the European, and the American novel...

. At one point, Q. D. wrote to him "Mrs Leavis informs Mr Ford that he is no longer an acceptable visitor to her house. Any communications from him will not be answered."

Family

He was married twice. With his first wife, Noreen, he had two daughters and a son, and was the step father to Noreen's daughter by her first marriage. He was the step father of a daughter of his second wife, Inge.

Publications

• Medieval Literature: Chaucer and the alliterative tradition: with an anthology of Medieval poems and drama, ed. Boris Ford (1982)
• The New Pelican Guide to English Literature: From Donne to Marvell ed. Boris Ford ISBN 0-14-022266-9
• The New Pelican Guide to English Literature: Medieval Literature ed. Boris Ford ISBN 0-14-022272-3
• The New Pelican Guide to English Literature: The Age of Chaucer ed. Boris Ford ISBN 0-14-020290-0
• The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vol. 2, The Age of Shakespeare, ed. Boris Ford ISBN 0-14-022265-0
• The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vol. 4, From Dryden to Johnson, ed. Boris Ford (1957) ISBN 0-14-022267-7
• The New Pelican
  Pelican Publishing Company
  Pelican Publishing Company is a book publisher based in Gretna, a suburb of New Orleans. It was formed in 1926 and in its time has produced 1500 titles, most of which relate to Louisiana and Southern culture, cuisine, and history...
  
   Guide to English Literature: From Blake
  William Blake
  William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
  
   to Byron
  George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
  George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
  
   (Pelican
  Pelican Publishing Company
  Pelican Publishing Company is a book publisher based in Gretna, a suburb of New Orleans. It was formed in 1926 and in its time has produced 1500 titles, most of which relate to Louisiana and Southern culture, cuisine, and history...
  
  , 1957). ISBN 0-14-020402-4.
• The New Pelican Guide to English Literature: From Dickens
  Charles Dickens
  Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
  
   to Hardy
  Thomas Hardy
  Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
  
   (Pelican
  Pelican Publishing Company
  Pelican Publishing Company is a book publisher based in Gretna, a suburb of New Orleans. It was formed in 1926 and in its time has produced 1500 titles, most of which relate to Louisiana and Southern culture, cuisine, and history...
  
  , 1957). ISBN 0-14-022269-3.
• The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vol. 7: James to Eliot, ed. Boris Ford (Penguin, 1990)
• The New Pelican Guide to English Literature: Vol. 9: American Literature ed. Boris Ford
• The Cambridge Guide to the Arts in Britain, Vol 2: The Middle Ages ed. Boris Ford (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
• The Cambridge Guide to the Arts In Britain: The Seventeenth Century, ed. Boris Ford (Cambridge University Press)
• The Cambridge Cultural History of Great Britain: Early Britain (1988) ed. Boris Ford
• Romantics to Early Victorians, ed. Boris Ford (Cambridge University Press, 1990)
• The Cambridge Cultural History of Great Britain, Volume 8, ed. Boris Ford (Cambridge University Press, 1992)
• The Cambridge Cultural History of Great Britain, Volume 9, Modern Britain, ed. Boris Ford (Cambridge University Press, 1992)
• Benjamin Britten's Poets (1994)

Editor of Journals

• 1951-1968 Co-editor of The Use of English with David Holbrook
  David Holbrook
  David Kenneth Holbrook was a British writer, poet and academic. From 1989 he was an Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge.-Life:...
  
  , Denys Thompson, and Raymond O'Malley
• 1955-1986 Editor of Universities Quarterly
• Editor of the Journal of Education

External links

• Cambridge Cultural History of Great Britain Cambridge University Press