Christopher Ricks

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Christopher Ricks (born 1933) is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University (USA) and Co-Director of the Editorial Insitute at Boston University, and since 2004 Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford (England).

He was born in Beckenham and studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first in English. He served in the Green Howards in the British Army in 1953/4 in Egypt. He held a position at Worcester College, Oxford, moving in 1968 to become Professor of English at the University of Bristol. During his time at Bristol he worked on Keats and Embarrassment (1974), in which he made the then revelatory connection between the letters and the poetry. It was also at Bristol that he first published his still-definitive edition of Tennyson's poetry. In 1975, Ricks moved to the University of Cambridge (where he was King Edward VII Professor) before moving to Boston University in 1986. His favorite bad movie is purportedly The Stepfather, though he does have a fondness for Shallow Grave.

He is known as a champion of Victorian poetry, for his enthusiasm for Bob Dylan and for his opposition to literary theory, to which he would prefer the Johnsonian principle of the principle.

[edit] Works

A Dissertation Upon English Typographical Founders and Founderies 1778 by Edward Rowe Mores (1961) editor with Harry Carter
Milton's Grand Style (1963)
Poems and Critics (1966) anthology
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1967) editor with Graham Petrie
Twentieth Century Views: A. E. Housman (1968) editor
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained by John Milton (1968) editor
English Poetry and Prose 1540-1674 (1970)) editor
English Drama To 1710 (1971) editor
The Brownings Letters and Poetry (1970) editor
Tennyson (1972)
A Collection of Poems By Alfred Tennyson (1972) editor
Selected Criticism of Matthew Arnold (1972) editor
Keats and Embarrassment (1974)
Geoffrey Hill and the Tongue's Atrocities (1978)
The State of the Language (1979) editor with Leonard Michaels, later edition 1990
The Force of Poetry (1984) essays
The Poems of Tennyson (1987) three volumes, editor
The Tennyson Archive (from 1987) editor with Aidan Day, 31 volumes
The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (1987) editor
T.S. Eliot and Prejudice (1988)
A.E. Housman: Collected Poems and Selected Prose (1988) editor
The Faber Book of America (1992) editor with William L. Vance
The Golden Treasury (1991) editor
Beckett's Dying Words (1993)
Essays in Appreciation (1996)
Inventions of the March Hare : Poems, 1909-1917 by T.S. Eliot (1998) editor
The Oxford Book of English Verse (1999) editor
Allusion to the Poets (2002)
Selected Poems of James Henry (2002) editor
Reviewery (2003) essays
Dylan's Visions of Sin (2003)
Decisions And Revisions In T.S. Eliot (2003)
Samuel Menashe: Selected Poems (2005) editor