Richard Holmes (biographer)

Richard Holmes (born November 5, 1945) is a British author best-known for his biographical studies of major figures of British and French Romanticism.

Biography

Holmes was born in London. He was educated at Downside School, Somerset and Churchill College, Cambridge.^[1] He is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the British Academy. He was professor of Biographical Studies at the University of East Anglia (2001-2007) and has honorary doctorates from UEA, University of East London, University of Kingston and the Tavistock Institute. In 1992 he was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire). He lives in London and Norfolk (UK), with his wife, British novelist Rose Tremain.

Literary biography

Holmes's major works of Romantic biography include: Shelley: The Pursuit which won him the Somerset Maugham Award in 1974; Coleridge: Early Visions, which won him the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year Prize (now the Costa Book Awards); Coleridge: Darker Reflections, the second and final volume of his Coleridge biography which won the Duff Cooper Prize and the Heinemann Award; and Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage, concerning the friendship between eighteenth-century British literary figures Samuel Johnson and Richard Savage, which won the James Tait Black Prize.

Holmes is also the author of two studies of European 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 and an introductory account of the lives and works of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin.

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, 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, 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, Coleridge, Byron and Keats. The book received wide review coverage (see below) and featured on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week from Monday 20 October 2008.^[2]

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 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 - (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^[3], 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)

References

^ Richard Holmes, contemporarywriters.com. Retrieved on 7 August 2009.
^ Book of the week, BBC Radio 4. Retrieved on 7 August 2009.
^ Above bibliographic detail taken from a copy of Dr Johnson and Mr Savage first published in 1993

External links

The Age of Wonder press coverage

[1] Richard Holmes, contemporarywriters.com. Retrieved on 7 August 2009.

[2] Book of the week, BBC Radio 4. Retrieved on 7 August 2009.

[3] Above bibliographic detail taken from a copy of Dr Johnson and Mr Savage first published in 1993

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