All Topics  
Richard Holmes (biographer)

 

 
   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link
 

 

Richard Holmes (biographer)
 
 
  Topics Richard Holmes (biographer) Topic Home

Richard Holmes (born 1945) is a British author best-known for his biographical studies of major figures of British and French Romanticism
Romanticism

Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution....
.

s a Fellow
Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. Historically, the term fellow was also used to describe a man, particularly by those in the upper social classes....
 of The Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the British Academy
British Academy

The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established by Royal Charter in 1902, and is a fellowship of more than 800 scholars....
. He was professor of Biographical Studies at the University of East Anglia
University of East Anglia

The University of East Anglia is a public university research university located in Norwich, England, and founded in 1963. The university is a member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities....
 (2001-2007) and has honorary doctorates from UEA
UEA

UEA may stand for:Universities:*University of East Anglia, a university in Norwich, England*University of the State of Amazonas , a university in Manaus, Brazil...
, University of East London
University of East London

The University of East London is a united Kingdom New Universities based on two campuses in East London, England. Founded in 1970 as North East London Polytechnic, UEL was formed from a merger of higher education colleges, including West Ham Technical Institute, in Stratford, London, and South East Essex Technical College in Barking....
, University of Kingston and the Tavistock Institute
Tavistock Institute

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is a British charity concerned with group behaviour and organisational behaviour. It was launched in 1946, when it separated from the Tavistock Clinic....
. In 1992 he was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a United Kingdom order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom....
).






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Richard Holmes (biographer)'
Start a new discussion about 'Richard Holmes (biographer)'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


Richard Holmes (born 1945) is a British author best-known for his biographical studies of major figures of British and French Romanticism
Romanticism

Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution....
.

Biography

He is a Fellow
Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. Historically, the term fellow was also used to describe a man, particularly by those in the upper social classes....
 of The Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the British Academy
British Academy

The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established by Royal Charter in 1902, and is a fellowship of more than 800 scholars....
. He was professor of Biographical Studies at the University of East Anglia
University of East Anglia

The University of East Anglia is a public university research university located in Norwich, England, and founded in 1963. The university is a member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities....
 (2001-2007) and has honorary doctorates from UEA
UEA

UEA may stand for:Universities:*University of East Anglia, a university in Norwich, England*University of the State of Amazonas , a university in Manaus, Brazil...
, University of East London
University of East London

The University of East London is a united Kingdom New Universities based on two campuses in East London, England. Founded in 1970 as North East London Polytechnic, UEL was formed from a merger of higher education colleges, including West Ham Technical Institute, in Stratford, London, and South East Essex Technical College in Barking....
, University of Kingston and the Tavistock Institute
Tavistock Institute

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is a British charity concerned with group behaviour and organisational behaviour. It was launched in 1946, when it separated from the Tavistock Clinic....
. In 1992 he was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a United Kingdom order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom....
). He lives in London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
 and Norfolk
Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying Counties of England in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and with Suffolk to the south....
 (UK), with his wife, British novelist Rose Tremain
Rose Tremain

Rose Tremain Order of the British Empire is an England author....
.

Literary Biography

Holmes's major works of Romantic biography include: Shelley: The Pursuit which won him the Somerset Maugham Award
Somerset Maugham Award

The Somerset Maugham Award is a List of British literary awards given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to who they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year....
 in 1974; Coleridge: Early Visions, which won him the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year Prize (now the Costa Book Awards
Costa Book Awards

The Costa Book Awards are a series of literary awards given to books by authors based in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. They were known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2006, when Costa Coffee, a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship....
); Coleridge: Darker Reflections, the second and final volume of his Coleridge
Coleridge

Coleridge may refer to:* Coleridge, Nebraska, a village in the U.S.* Coleridge, North Carolina* Coleridge, Cambridgeshire, a ward in the Cambridge...
 biography which won the Duff Cooper Prize
Duff Cooper Prize

The Duff Cooper Prize is a prize which goes to the best work of history, biography, or political science published in English language or French language....
 and the Heinemann Award; and Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage, concerning the friendship between eighteenth-century British literary figures Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson was an English author. Beginning as a Grub Street journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer....
 and Richard Savage
Richard Savage

Richard Savage was an England poet. He is best known as the subject of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage , one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets....
, which won the James Tait Black Prize.

Holmes is also the author of two studies of Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
an biography. Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer is a highly-acclaimed volume of memoirs and personal reflections on the biographer's art and Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer collects his shorter pieces, including an early, groundbreaking essay on Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Chatterton

Thomas Chatterton was an English poet and forgery of pseudo-medieval poetry. Committing suicide by arsenic rather than die of starvation at the young age of 17, he served as an icon of unacknowledged genius for the Romanticisms....
 and an introductory account of the lives and works of Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century Kingdom of Great Britain writer, philosopher, and feminist. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel literature, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book....
 and William Godwin
William Godwin

William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosophy and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and one of the first modern proponents of philosophical anarchism....
.

He is editor of the Harper Perennial series Classic Biographies, launched in 2004.

His 2005 monograph on biography and portraiture for the National Portrait Gallery, Insights: The Romantic Poets and their Circle, was unusual in that it included scientists alongside literary writers. He has also written many drama-documentaries for BBC Radio
BBC Radio

BBC Radio is a service of the BBC which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company, Ltd....
, most recently The Frankenstein Experiment (2002), and A Cloud in a Paper Bag (2007) about 18th century balloon mania.

In October 2008 his first major work of biography in over a decade, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, was published by HarperPress. In it he explores the scientific ferment that swept across Britain at the end of 18th century. Holmes proposes a radical vision of science before Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin Royal Society was an English people natural history who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolution over time from common descent, through the process he called natural selection....
, exploring the earliest ideas of deep time and deep space, the creative rivalry with the French scientific establishment, and the startling impact of discovery on great writers and poets such as Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel literature, best known for her Gothic fiction Frankenstein ....
, Coleridge, Byron
Büron

B?ron is a Municipalities of Switzerland in the district of Sursee in the Cantons of Switzerland of Lucerne in Switzerland....
 and Keats. The book received wide review coverage and featured on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a domestic UK radio station that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history....
's Book of the Week
Book of the Week

Book of the Week is a BBC Radio 4 series broadcast daily on week days. Each week the selected book, always a non-fiction work, is read in five episodes; each fifteen-minute episode is broadcast in the morning and repeated overnight ....
 from Monday 20 October 2008.

Bibliography

  • One for Sorrow (Poems - published by Cafe Books in 1970)
  • Shelley: The Pursuit (Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1974, current edition published by HarperPerennial ISBN 978-0-00-720458-8)
  • Gautier: My Fantoms (Translation - Published by Quartet Books in 1976)
  • Shelley on Love: Selected Writings (Published by Anvil Books in 1980, current edition published by HarperPress ISBN 978-0-00-655012-9)
  • Coleridge (Past Masters) (Published by Oxford University Press in 1982)
  • Nerval: The Chimeras (Co-author with Peter Jay
    Peter Jay

    Peter Jay is a British economist, broadcaster and diplomat....
     Published by Anvil Press in 1985)
  • Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (Published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1985, current edition published by HarperPerenial ISBN 978-0-00-720453-3)
  • Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin: A Short Residence in Sweden and Memoirs (Published by Penguin Classics in 1987)
  • Kipling: Something of Myself (Co-author with Robert Hampson
    Robert Hampson

    Robert Hampson is an English people musician, known primarily as a guitarist. In 1986 he and his wife at the time, drummer Bex, co-founded Loop in London....
     - (Published in Penguin Classics in 1987)
  • De Feministe en De Filosoof (Published in Amsterdam in 1988)
  • Coleridge: Early Visions (Published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1989, current edition published by HarperPerenial ISBN 978-0-00-720457-1)
  • Dr Johnson and Mr. Savage (Published Hodder and Stoughton in 1993, current edition published by HarperPerenial ISBN 978-0-00-720455-7)
  • Coleridge: Selected Poems (Editor - Published by HarperPress in 1996 ISBN 978-0-00-255579-1)
  • Coleridge: Darker Reflections (Published by HarperPress in 1998, current edition published by HarperPerenial ISBN 978-0-00-720456-4)
  • Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer (Published by HarperPress in 2000, current edition published by HarperPerenial ISBN 978-0-00-720454-0)
  • The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Published by HarperPress in 2008 ISBN 978-0-00-714952-0)


Classic Biographies Series (HarperPerenial) edited by Richard Holmes

  • Defoe on Sheppard and Wild: The True and Genuine Account of the Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild by Daniel Defoe (2004, ISBN 978-0-00-711168-8)
  • Southey on Nelson: The Life of Nelson by Robert Southey (2004, ISBN 978-0-00-711170-1)
  • Scott on Zélide: Portrait of Zélide by Geoffrey Scott (2004, ISBN 978-0-00-711173-2)
  • Johnson on Savage: The Life of Mr Richard Savage by Samuel Johnson (2005, ISBN 978-0-00-711169-5)
  • Godwin on Wollstonecraft: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by William Godwin (2005, ISBN 978-0-00-711176-3)
  • Gilchrist on Blake: The Life of William Blake by Alexander Gilchrist (2005, ISBN 978-0-00-711171-8)


External links

  • Transcript of interview with Ramona Koval
    Ramona Koval

    Ramona Koval is an Australian broadcaster, writer and journalist.Koval is known for her extended and in-depth interviews with significant writers....
    , The Book Show
    The Book Show

    The Book Show is a Australian Australian Broadcasting Corporation program for the discussion of everything relating to the written word. It is broadcast live around Australia on Radio National with a daily weekday morning show which is then replayed nightly and also has a sunday evening show....
    , ABC Radio National.


The Age of Wonder press coverage