Terry Castle

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Terry Castle, once described by Susan Sontag as "the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today," has published seven books, Clarissa's Ciphers: Meaning and Disruption in Richardson's 'Clarissa' (1982); Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (1986); The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (1993); The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny (1995), Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall: Kindred Spirits (1996); Boss Ladies, Watch Out! Essays on Women, Sex, and Writing (2002); and Courage, Mon Amie (2002).

A noted prose stylist, Castle writes on topics ranging from eighteenth-century ghost stories to World War I era lesbianism to the so-called "photographic fringe." Her essays appear regularly in the London Review of Books, the Atlantic, and the New Republic.

Castle has begun experimenting in new media; her recent art, including a range of self portraits, may be viewed at http://www.stanford.edu/~castle/.

A long-time resident of San Francisco, Castle also reports that she is a "miniature dachshund enthusiast." (Although the linguistic ambiguity in the description "miniature daschund enthusiast" is intentional on Castle's part, it should nonetheless be said that she is enthusiastic about miniature dacshunds, not that she is herself miniature.)

She is currently Walter A. Hass Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University.

[1] Castle's professional web page [2] Boss Ladies! [3] Female Thermometer [4] Masquerade and Civilization [5] New Republic [6] London Review of Books [7] The Atlantic Online