Karl Miller

Karl Fergus Connor Miller FRSL (2 August 1931 – 24 September 2014) was a Scottish literary editor, critic and writer.

Biography

Miller was born in the village of Loanhead, Midlothian, and was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied English; he was a Cambridge Apostle. He became literary editor of The Spectator and the New Statesman. Miller resigned from the latter over a disagreement with the magazine's editor Paul Johnson over the extent to which the literary pages treated difficult subjects, and also Johnson's disapproval of The Beatles and their fans.

He was then editor of The Listener (1967–73) and subsequently of the London Review of Books, which he founded, from 1979 to 1992. He was also Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature and head of the English Department at University College London from 1974 to 1992.

Miller died on 24 September 2014, at the age of 83.

Works

Poetry from Cambridge 1952–4. Oxford, 1955 (editor)

Writing in England Today: the last fifteen years. London: Penguin, 1968 (editor)

Memoirs of a Modern Scotland. London: Faber, 1970 (editor)

Cockburn's Millennium. London: Duckworth, 1975 (a biography of Henry Cockburn, which won Miller the James Tait Black Memorial Prize)

Doubles: Studies in Literary History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985 (criticism)

Authors. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989

Rebecca's Vest: a memoir. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993

Boswell and Hyde. London: Syrens, 1995

Dark Horses: an experience of literary journalism. London: Picador, 1998 (memoir)

Seamus Heaney in conversation with Karl Miller. London: BTL, 2000

Electric Shepherd: a likeness of James Hogg. London: Faber, 2003 (biography)

Tretower to Clyro: essays. London: Quercus, 2011

Reviews

Murray, Tom, Review of Electric Shepherd: A Likeness of James Hogg, in Colton, Julian & Murray, Tom (eds), The Eildon Tree, Issue 10: Winter 2004, Scottish Borders Council, Selkirk, pp. 4 & 5.