Karl Beckson
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Karl Beckson (born February 4, 1926 in New York and died April 29, 2008) was an American author of numerous articles and sixteen books on British literature, culture, and authors including Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, and Henry Harland. He gained an international reputation for his scholarship on the late 19th century Symbolist Movement and its influence on early 20th century authors such as James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Bernard Shaw. He also co-authored, with Arthur Ganz, Literary Terms: A Dictionary, first published in 1960, and still available in its extensively revised 1990 third edition.
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[edit] Academic Career
He earned a B.A., English, from University of Arizona in 1949, an M.A. from Columbia University in 1952, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1959. At Columbia, he studied with Lionel Trilling, Mark Van Doren, and William York Tindall. His Ph.D. dissertation concerned The Rhymers' Club. He first taught at Columbia (1956-1959), then at Bronx Community College (1959-1960), and at Fairleigh-Dickinson University (1960-1961). He taught at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, from 1961 until his retirement in 2002 having held the title of professor since 1976. He led a seminar for psychiatry residents with Dr. Simon Grolnick at Cornell University Medical College (1981-1995) with the title of Lecturer of English in Psychiatry.
[edit] Awards
City University of New York Summer Research Award, 1967. Research Foundation Award, 1972-1973. Andrew Mellon Fellowship, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1978. National Endowment of the Arts Senior Fellow, 1989-90.
[edit] Personal
Born and raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, he obtained his first library card at the 96th Street branch of the New York Public Library. In 1943, at age 17, he volunteered for the United States Navy, serving to yeoman 2nd class aboard the destroyer, USS Ross (DD-563), the only ship in U.S. naval history to survive two underwater mine explosions (Leyte Gulf, South Pacific). He was married since February 9, 1957 to Estelle with whom he had two sons, Mace and Eric.
[edit] Bibliography
- Literary Terms: A Dictionary; Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 1960.
- Great Theories in Literary Criticism; Farrar Strauss and Company, 1963.
- Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage; Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970.
- Max and Will; Edited by Mary Lago and Karl Beckson; Harvard University Press, 1975.
- The Memoirs of Arthur Symons: Life and Art in the 1890s; The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977.
- Henry Harland: His Life and Work; The Eighteen Nineties Society, 1978.
- Oscar Wilde: A Memoir by Theodore Wrattislaw; Forward by Sir John Betjeman; Introduction and Notes by Karl Beckson; The Eighteen Nineties Society, 1979.
- Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890's: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose; Academy Chicago, 1981.
- Arthur Symons: A Life; Clarendon Press, 1987.
- Arthur Symons: Selected Letters 1880-1935; Edited by Karl Beckson and John M. Munro; The MacMillan Press, 1989.
- Arthur Symons: A Bibliography; Edited by Karl Beckson, Ian Fletcher, Lawrence W. Markert, John Stokes; ELT Press, 1990;
- London in the Eighteen Nineties: A Cultural History; W.W. Norton, 1992.
- I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation and other Quotations from Oscar Wilde; Columbia University Press, 1996.
- The Oscar Wilde Encyclopedia; Forward by Merlin Holland; AMS Press, 1998.
- The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde; Edited by Bobby Fong and Karl Beckson; Oxford University Press, 2000.
- The Religion of Art: A Modernist Theme in British Literature; AMS Press, 2006.
