RF Foster

Robert Fitzroy "Roy" Foster (born January 16, 1949 in Waterford ) is an Irish historian and writer. His works are published under the name RF Foster . He is the Carroll Professor of Irish History at Hertford College , Oxford . His two-volume biography on the Irish poet William Butler Yeats received the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize .

Life

Foster was born on January 16, 1949 in Waterford, the son of a teacher couple. His mother Betty Foster (née Fitzroy) was an elementary school teacher, his father Ernest 'Fef' Foster an Irish teacher. He was a student at Newtown School in Waterford, a multi- denominational school founded as a Quaker school in the late 18th century. After receiving a scholarship, he attended St. Andrew's School in Middletown , Delaware , for a year . Then Foster went to Trinity College Dublin , where he was tutored by historians TW Moody and FSL Lyons .

Foster has been married to the Irish writer and critic Aisling Foster (née O'Conor Donelan) since 1972. This marriage resulted in two children.

academic career

At Trinity College Dublin, Foster received his Master of Arts and Ph.D. From 1969 he held history lectures there as a lecturer in history and politics. Prior to being named Carroll Professor of Irish History in 1991, he taught Modern British History at Birkbeck College of the University of London , with guest lectures at St Antony's College in Oxford, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Princeton University .

Works

Foster wrote biographies on Charles Stewart Parnell and Lord Randolph Churchill , edited The Oxford History of Ireland (1989), and wrote Modern Ireland: 1600-1972 (1988), as well as several volumes of essays. He worked with Fintan Cullen on an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery , Conquering England: the Irish in Victorian London . Seamus Deane wrote a review in the Irish Times on September 27, 2003, in which he recited WB Yeats: "My glory was that I had such friends" (German: "My fame is based on the fact that I have such friends"). Deane suggested that Yeats was lucky to have had a biographer like Foster.

In 2000, Foster was a jury member for the Man Booker Prize .

Awards

The data in this section (until 2011) follow the data from Hertfort College.

• In 1986 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS).
• In 1989 he was made a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).
• In 1992 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL).
• In 1998 he received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize .
• In 2003 he received the Christian Gauss Award for Literary Criticism for his work The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (2001).
• In 2011 he was made an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA).
• In 2016 he was elected a member of the Academia Europaea .

Honorary doctorates

• University of Aberdeen
• Queen's University (Kingston)
• Trinity College Dublin
• Queen's University Belfast
• National University of Ireland
• University of Edinburgh

Publications (selection)

• Charles Stewart Parnell: The Man and His Family (Sussex: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1976; NJ: Humanities Press 1979), ISBN 978-0-391-00909-7
• To The Northern Counties Station: Lord Randolph Churchill and the Prelude to the Orange Card. In: FSL Lyons and RAJ Hawkins, (Eds.), Ireland Under the Union: Varieties of Tension. Essays in Honor of TW Moody, Oxford Clarendon Press 1980, pp. 237-287, ISBN 978-0-19-822469-3
• Lord Randolph Churchill: A Political Life (Oxford: OUP 1981), ISBN 978-0-19-822756-4
• Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (London: Allen Lane; NY Viking / Penguin 1988) [with introductory essay on 'Varieties of Irishness'], ISBN 978-0-14-013250-2
• (Ed.): The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Ireland (OUP 1989; [rev. Edn. As] The Oxford History of Ireland , OUP 1992), ISBN 978-0-19-285245-8
• WB Yeats, A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage, 1865-1914 (OUP March 1997), ISBN 978-0-19-288085-7
• The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (London: Allen Lane / Penguin Press 2001), ISBN 978-0-14-029685-3
• WB Yeats - A Life, Vol. II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939 (Oxford: OUP 2003), ISBN 978-0-19-818465-2
• Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change from 1970 (Oxford: OUP 2008), ISBN 978-0-19-517952-1
• Vivid Faces: the revolutionary generation in Ireland 1890-1923 (London, 2014), ISBN 978-0-241-95424-9

Web links

• Archive of Foster's contributions to the London Review of Books
• Andrew Brown: Interpreter of myths . In: The Guardian , September 13, 2003
• Foster's résumé and list of publications on the Hertford College website

Remarks

1. ^ Foster's résumé and list of publications on the Hertford College website; accessed February 1, 2016.
2. ^ Booker prize winners, shortlists and judges . In: The Guardian . October 10, 2008. Retrieved November 21, 2014.
3. ^ Foster's résumé and list of publications on the Hertford College website; accessed February 1, 2016.