弗兰克·科莫德

Sir John Frank Kermode (29 November 1919 – 17 August 2010) was a British literary critic best known for his 1967 work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction and for his extensive book-reviewing and editing.

He was the Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London and the King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University.

Kermode was known for many works of criticism, and also as editor of the popular Fontana Modern Masters series of introductions to modern thinkers. He was a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books.

Early life and education

Kermode was born on the Isle of Man, the only son and elder child of John Pritchard Kermode (1894–1966) and Doris Pearl (1893–1967), née Kennedy, and grew up in Douglas. His father was a delivery truck driver and warehouseman for a ferry company, and his mother, a "farm girl", had been a waitress. The family was of "extremely modest means", and "struggled to maintain a respectable yet always precarious standard of life". The Kermode family—which according to Kermode's reminiscences had "some kind of Welsh connection"—had in previous generations been somewhat more comfortable financially; Kermode's grandfather was an organist, and his grandmother, who remarried as a widow, came to own an off-licence/ general store. Her new husband "staged a robbery of the shop and stole the stock and... she went bankrupt". Kermode's father, on returning from serving in the First World War, finding there now to be no family business, "took temporary jobs and then got what he thought was a job that would see him through, as a storekeeper and he stayed in that for the rest of his career". Kermode's father retired after the Second World War, both he and his wife coming to be in poor health; Kermode's mother suffered from dementia, and his father was "an extreme diabetic", dying from diabetes while resident in a retirement home. Kermode, having come first in the examinations allowing attendance, was educated at Douglas High School for Boys and the University of Liverpool. He served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, for six years in total, much of it in Iceland.

Career

He began his academic career as a lecturer at King's College, Durham University, in 1947. He later taught at the University of Reading from 1949, where he produced the Arden edition of Shakespeare's The Tempest. He held professorships at the University of Manchester (1958) and the University of Bristol (1965), before being appointed to the Lord Northcliffe chair at University College London (UCL) in 1967. Under Kermode, the UCL English Department chaired a series of graduate seminars which broke new ground by introducing for the first time contemporary French critical theory to Britain.

Kermode was a contributor for several years to the literary and political magazine Encounter and in 1965 became co-editor. He resigned within two years, once it became clear that the magazine was funded by the CIA.

In 1974, Kermode took the position of King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University. He resigned the post in 1982, at least in part because of the acrimonious tenure debate surrounding Colin MacCabe. He then moved to Columbia University, where he was Julian Clarence Levi Professor Emeritus in the Humanities. In 1975–76 he held the Norton Lectureship at Harvard University.

Awards and recognitions

He was knighted in 1991. A few months before Kermode's death, the scholar James Shapiro described him as "the best living reader of Shakespeare anywhere, hands down".

Kermode died in Cambridge on 17 August 2010.

Personal life

Kermode was married twice. He was married to Maureen Eccles from 1947 to 1970. The couple had twins. His second marriage was to the American scholar Anita Van Vactor. The couple co-edited The Oxford Book of Letters (1995).

In September 1996, boxes containing valuable books and manuscripts were removed by Cambridge City Council refuse collectors (instead of the removal company employed to move them to another house) and were destroyed. He sued CCC for £20,000; the Council denied responsibility.

Academic positions

Lecturer, University of Durham (1947–49)

Lecturer, University of Reading (1949–58)

John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature, University of Manchester (1958–65)

Winterstoke Professor of English, University of Bristol (1965–67)

Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature, University College London (1967–74)

King Edward VII Professor of English Literature, University of Cambridge (1974–82)

Fellow, King's College, Cambridge (1974–87)

Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry, Harvard University (1977–78)

Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University (1982–84)

Honorary Fellow, King's College, Cambridge (1988–2010)

Honorary Fellow, University College London (1996–2010)

Works

English Pastoral Poetry from the Beginnings to Marvell, (1952), Life, Literature and Thought Library, Harrap, ISBN 0-393-00612-3, OCLC 230064261

The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare: The Tempest (1954) London: Methuen, OCLC 479707500

Seventeenth Century Songs, now first printed from a Bodleian manuscript (1956), ed. with John P. Cutts. Reading University School of Art, OCLC 185784945

John Donne (1957), London: Longmans, Green & Co., ISBN 0-582-01086-1, OCLC 459757847

Romantic Image (1957), Routledge & Kegan Paul, ISBN 0-00-632801-6, OCLC 459757853

The Living Milton: essays by various hands, collected and edited by Frank Kermode (1960), Routledge & Kegan Paul, OCLC 460313451

Wallace Stevens (1961), Evergreen pilot books, EP4, New York: Grove Press, ISBN 0-14-118154-0, OCLC 302326

Puzzles and Epiphanies: essays and reviews 1958–1961 (1962), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, OCLC 6516698

Discussions of John Donne. Edited with an introduction by Frank Kermode (1962), Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., OCLC 561198453

Spenser and the Allegorists (1962), London: Oxford University Press, OCLC 6126122