Richard Ellmann
Richard Ellmann was born on March 15th, 1918. Richard passed away May 13th, 1987 at 69 years old. Richard Ellmann was born in Highland Park, Michigan, United States. Ellmann attended Yale University where he received a B.A., M.A., and a PhD.
Richard Ellmann was an American literary critic and biographer of Irish writers William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and Oscar Wilde.
He won the US National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book
James Joyce, which is one of the most acclaimed literary biographies of the 20th century. Its revised edition in 1982 won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Richard was a liberal humanist, and his academic work focuses on the major modernist writers of the 20th century.
Richard studied at Yale University, getting his BA in 1939, his MA in 1941, and his PhD (for which he later won the John Addison Porter Prize) in 1947. That same year, he was awarded a B.Litt degree by Trinity College Dublin, where he was resident as he researched his Yeats biography.
While he was an undergraduate at Jonathan Edwards College, he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa; Chi Delta Theta, and a member of the Executive Editorial Board of the Yale Literary Magazine. He achieved the rank of “Scholar of the Second Rank” (equivalent to magna cum laude).
Richard would return to teach at Yale, and there he and Charles Feidelson Jr edited
The Modern Tradition, an anthology. He had earlier taught at Northwestern and the University of Oxford before serving as Emory University’s Robert W. Woodruff Professor from 1980 until his death.
James Joyce. Even though several biographers have thrown themselves into the breach ever since this book first appeared in 1959, none of them have even come close to matching the late Richard Ellman’s achievement. Although, to be fair, Richard does have some distinct advantages over them.
For starters, there is his profound mastery of the Irish milieu, demonstrated not just in this volume but also in his books on Wilde and Yeats. He is also an admirable stylist himself: witty, graceful, and happily unintimidated by his brilliant subjects. However, in addition, he appears to have this uncanny grasp on Joyce’s personality: his reverence for the Irishman’s literary accomplishment is balanced always by a sort of bemused affection for his faults.
Whether Joyce is falling down drunk in the streets of Trieste, putting the finishing touches on
Ulysses, or talking dirty to his future wife via the postal service, Richard’s account always shows us a human being and a genius, a daunting enough task for any fiction writer, let alone a fact-fettered biographer. Richard has expanded and revised his definitive work on Joyce’s life to now include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, previously unknown letters, a dream notebook, and much more.
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- Stephen King, author of The Dark Tower Series.
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- Charles Dickens, author of: A Christmas Carol.
- David Baldacci, author of the Amos Decker Series.
Richard Ellmann: F.A.Q
When was Richard Ellmann Born?
Richard Ellmann was born on March 15th, 1918.
When did Richard Ellmann die?
Richard Ellmann died on May 13th, 1987 at 69 years old.
Where was Richard Ellmann Born?
Richard Ellmann was born in Highland Park, Michigan, United States.
What was the first book Richard Ellmann wrote?
The first book written by Richard Ellmann was Yeats: The Man And The Masks, published in 1948.
What was the most recent book Richard Ellmann wrote?
His most recently released work was The Norton Anthology of Modern & Contemporary Poetry, Vol 1: Modern Poetry on January 2nd, 2003.
How many books has Richard Ellmann written?
Richard Ellmann has written 15 books. 1 book in the Faber Stories Series, 13 Non-Fiction Books, 1 book in the Norton Anthology of English Literature Series.