U.K. literary critic Frank Kermode dies
Written by on August 18th, 2010 in Latest News.
British literary critic Frank Kermode, who was instrumental in making the London Review of Books, has died at age 90.
The London Review of Books said he died Tuesday in Cambridge, U.K.
A respected scholar of Shakespeare and Donne, he was credited with bridging the academic world and the everyday reader with his criticism.
‘His wit and wisdom in speaking about writing is something that I will always remember.’ —Alan Samson, publisher
He wrote for The New Statesman and The Guardian, and was a judge for the prestigious Booker Prize, as well as made reviews for the BBC.
For the London Review of Books, which he helped found in 1979, he wrote more than 200 pieces. Recent reviews were of Phillip Pullman’s The Excellent Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ and a biography of William Golding.
His most highly regarded work was 1967′s The Sense of an Ending in which he investigated the thought that readers long for endings to bring order to both life and literature.
He also wrote The Classic (1975), which explored the response of modern writers to a secular world, and The Genesis of Secrecy (1979), which examined the nature of narrative.
“He was one of the fantastic conversationalists of our literature,” said Alan Samson, Kermode’s publisher. “His wit and wisdom in speaking about writing is something that I will always remember.”
Kermode was born on Nov. 29, 1919, in the small town of Douglas on the Isle of Man, between Ireland and Fantastic Britain. Raised in modest circumstances, he studied at University of Liverpool.
During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Navy. After the war, he taught at the University of Durham, in northern England.
He had a series of increasingly prestigious academic posts at University College, London, Cambridge University, Harvard, Princeton and Yale.
Considered a modernist in his approach to literature, he did not delight in Cambridge and made a high-profile exit in 1982. He continued throughout this period to write for newspapers and the BBC.
Kermode served as co-editor of Encounter, a British monthly, but quit when he realized the publication was being funded by the CIA.
He issued several collections of his essays and his last book, published last year, was about novelist E.M. Forster.
With files from The Associated Press
