Christopher Ricks

Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks (born September 18, 1933 in Beckenham , Kent (today: London ), England ) is an English literary scholar and literary critic . He was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 2004 to 2009 and teaches at Boston University .

life and work

Ricks' parents ran a skinning business; they divorced when Christopher Ricks was three years old. He attended King Alfred's private school around the same time as the jockey Lester Piggott . After completing school he received a scholarship to Oxford University and began his studies there in 1953 at Balliol College , after serving two years in the military in Egypt and attaining the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in the British Army .

In 1956 he married Kirsten Jensen, with whom he has two sons and two daughters. The marriage ended in divorce in the 1970s. In 1977 he married the American photographer Judith Aronson. From this marriage there were two daughters and one son.

From 1957 Ricks researched and taught in Oxford, first at Balliol College, then at Worcester College. While still a student, he began to publish reviews in English magazines (the Spectator and the New Statesman ). In 1963 he wrote his first book on John Milton .

He moved to Bristol University in 1968 , where he worked on John Keats and edited a collection of poems by Alfred Tennyson . In 1975, he was appointed University of Cambridge to King Edward VII Professor of English Literature . In 1986 he moved to the United States and accepted a professorship at Boston University . As editor he was responsible for collections of Victorian poetry, by AE Housman , but also books on modern poets such as TS Eliot , Samuel Beckett and Bob Dylan .

In 2003 he was awarded the 1.5 million US dollars doped Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award . In 2004 he was appointed Oxford Professor of Poetry . In 2007/2008 he was President of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers . In 2009 he was raised to the nobility.

He lives in Boston and Gloucestershire .

reception

WH Auden described Ricks as "the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding" . (German: the kind of critic that every poet dreams of finding )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wroe, 2005

swell

• Nicholas Wroe: Bringing it all back home , portrait in The Guardian of January 29, 2005 (English)
• Short biography on the website of Boston University (English)
• Short biography on poemhunter.com (English)