John Bernard Beer, FBA (31 March 1926 – 10 December 2017) was a British literary critic. He was emeritus professor of English literature at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. Best known as a scholar and critic of Romantic poets – especially William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth – he also published on E. M. Forster. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1994.
Beer served in the RAF from 1946 to 1948. He was a junior research fellow at St John's College, Cambridge, from 1955 to 1958. Between 1958 and 1964 he was assistant lecturer and then lecturer at the University of Manchester. From 1964 until his retirement in 1993, he was successively lecturer, reader (1978) and professor (1987) of English literature at the University of Cambridge. He was married to the literary critic Gillian Beer, DBE. He was president of the Charles Lamb Society from 1989 until 2002. He was a Leverhulme emeritus fellow in 1995–1996 and was the 2006 Stanton lecturer in the philosophy of religion in the University of Cambridge.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and Charles Lloyd. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking cultures. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including "suspension of disbelief". He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism.
Richard Mant was an English churchman who became a bishop in Ireland. He was a prolific writer, his major work being a History of the Church of Ireland.
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, known professionally by her former marriage name as A. S. Byatt, is an English critic, novelist, poet and short story writer. Her books have been widely translated, into more than thirty languages.
Sara Coleridge was an English author and translator. She was the third child and only daughter of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his wife Sara Fricker.
Owen Davies is a British historian who specialises in the history of magic, witchcraft, ghosts, and popular medicine. He is currently Professor in History at the University of Hertfordshire and has been described as Britain's "foremost academic expert on the history of magic".
Sir John Frank Kermode, FBA was a British literary critic best known for his 1967 work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction and for his extensive book-reviewing and editing.
John Haffenden is emeritus professor of English literature at the University of Sheffield.
Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains offices in London, New York, Shanghai, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Delhi, and Johannesburg.
John Lennard is Professor of British and American Literature at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, Jamaica, and a freelance academic writer and film music composer. Since 2009 he has been an independent scholar in Cambridge and a bye-Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.
Jared Ralph Curtis is Professor Emeritus of English at Simon Fraser University.
Jennifer Sheila Uglow is an English biographer, historian, critic and publisher. She was an editorial director of Chatto & Windus. She has written critically acclaimed biographies of Elizabeth Gaskell, William Hogarth, Thomas Bewick, and Edward Lear, and a history and joint biography of the Lunar Society, among others, and has also compiled The Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography.
Lines Written at Shurton Bars was composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1795. The poem incorporates a reflection on Coleridge's engagement and his understanding of marriage. It also compares nature to an ideal understanding of reality and discusses isolation from others.
Michael H. Black was a British author and literary critic who held the position of University Publisher at Cambridge University Press.
Peter J. Kitson is a British academic and author. He is a Professor of Romantic Literature and Culture at the University of East Anglia where he teaches and researches the literature and culture of the British Romantic era.
Jeremy Tambling is a British writer and critic. He was Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong until 2006 and then Professor of Literature at the University of Manchester until December 2013. His most recent position is Professor of English at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw (2019).
Brooks Ashton Nichols is the Walter E. Beach ’56 Distinguished Chair Emeritus in Sustainable Studies and Professor of English Language and Literature Emeritus at Dickinson College. His interests are in literature, contemporary ecocriticism, Romanticism, and nature writing. Nichols taught courses in Romanticism, 19th century literature, literature and the environment, and nature writing. He is especially well-known for his study of James Joyce's literary concept of "epiphany," his definition of Romantic natural histories, and his coinage of the phrase "Urbanatural roosting," an idea which links urban with natural modes of existence and argues for ways of living more lightly on the earth, for inhabiting our planet the way animals do, by altering our environments without harming those same environments.
Nicholas Hugh Roe, FBA, FRSE is a scholar of English literature and an academic, specialising in Romantic literature and culture. Since 1996, he has been Professor of English Literature at the University of St Andrews. After completing his undergraduate degrees and doctorate at Trinity College, Oxford, Roe joined St Andrews as a lecturer in English in 1985; he was promoted to reader in 1993.
Isabella Fenwick was a 19th-century British amanuensis, and a confidante, advisor, and friend of William Wordsworth and his family in his later years. She is the scribe behind the Fenwick Notes, an autobiographical and poetic commentary Wordsworth dictated to her over a six-month period between January and June 1843. Her friendship inspired Wordsworth to write "On a Portrait of I.F., painted by Margaret Gillies" and "To I.F."—a sonnet in which he calls her "The star which comes at close of day to shine," a reference to their bond formed late in life.
Daniel Karlin is a British literary scholar. He was educated at St Paul's School, London (1967-1970) and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied for his BA (1971-1974) and PhD (1975-1978). He was a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford (1978-1980), and held appointments at University College London (1980-2004), Boston University (2005-2006), University of Sheffield (2006-2010), and University of Bristol (2010-2020), where he was Winterstoke Professor of English Literature. He retired in 2020 and was appointed Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Bristol. In the same year he was elected to a Fellowship of the British Academy. His research interests include Romantic and Victorian poetry; Robert Browning; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Henry James; Rudyard Kipling; Marcel Proust; and Bob Dylan.
Seamus Perry is an English author, academic, a Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford and, since 2014, a Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty at the University of Oxford.