Robert Liddell

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John ("Jock") Robert Liddell (born October 13, 1908 in Tunbridge Wells , † July 23, 1992 in Athens ) was an English writer and literary scholar .

Life

Liddell attended Haileybury School at Hertford and the University of Oxford . In Oxford he also worked in the Bodleian Library . It was there in the 1930s that he met the British writer Barbara Pym , whom he was critical of in her first literary attempts. Their eventful friendship was processed literarily by Barbara; the character of "Dr. Nicholas Parnell" in her novella Some Tame Gazelle is drawn after him.

He then went to Greece, where he worked in the British Embassy in Athens . After the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, he fled to Egypt , where he joined the Cairo poets , a group of English writers who had formed there as a result of the British military presence in Egypt around 1942. After the war he settled permanently in Athens, where he died.

Liddell has published literary works - including reviews and works on literary history -, translations into English, and novels and short stories . He gained greater fame through his lifelong study of the work of Konstantinos Kavafis , about whom he wrote a widely read biography that was translated into several languages ​​(1974, several editions).

One critic wrote of him in the 1970s:

“Liddell, who lives in Greece for thirty years has been learning to know that country with increased intimacy, nothing Greek is alien to him: he is as much at home with the poets of Modern Greece as with Homer, in prehistoric Thebes as with the nomad shepherds of today. "

Publications

fiction

  • The Last Enchantments , New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts 1949.
  • Unreal City , London: Cape 1952.
  • The Deep End , London: Longmans 1968.
  • Stepsons , London: Longmans 1969.
  • Elizabeth & Ivy , London: Peter Owen 1986.
  • The Aunts , London: Peter Owen 1987.
  • Kind Relations , London: Peter Owen 1994.
  • The Rivers of Babylon , London: Peter Owen 1995.

Non-fiction

  • A Treatise on the Novel , London: Cape 1947.
  • Some Principles Of Fiction , London: Cape 1953.
  • Aegean Greece , London: Cape 1954.
    • Landscape of Apollo. Journeys through the Aegean world , Zurich-Stuttgart: Fretz & Wasmuth 1957.
  • The Novels of I Compton-Burnett , London: Gollancz 1955.
  • Byzantium and Istanbul , London: Cape 1956.
    • The city on the Bosporus , Zurich-Stuttgart: Fretz & Wasmuth 1959.
  • The Morea , London: Cape 1958.
  • The Novels of Jane Austen , London: Longmans 1963.
  • Mainland Greece , London: Longmans 1965.
  • Cavafy , London: Duckworth 1974. Paperback: London: Duckworth 2002, ISBN 0-715-63208-6
  • The Novels of George Eliot , London: Duckworth 1977.
  • A mind at ease. Barbara Pym and her novels , London: Peter Owen 1989.
  • Twin spirits. The Novels of Emily and Anne Brontë , London: Peter Owen 1990.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted after http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Robert-Liddell ; German: "Liddell, who has lived in Greece for thirty years, has got to know this country better from year to year; nothing Greek is foreign to him anymore: He is just as at home with the poets of modern Greece as he is with Homer, in ancient Thebes as well with the wandering shepherds of the present. "
personal data
SURNAME Liddell, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Liddell, John Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Tunbridge Wells
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1992
Place of death Athens