Peter Conrad (academic)

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Peter Conrad (b. 1948, Hobart, Tasmania) is an Australian-born academic specializing in English literature, currently teaching at Christ Church at Oxford University.

Conrad moved to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship in 1968. He became a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, from 1970 to 1973 before taking up his current post at Christ Church. He has taught English at Christ Church, Oxford, since 1973, and has been a visiting Professor at Princeton University and at Williams College, and a guest lecturer throughout the United States. He lives in London, and spends part of each year in New York and Lisbon.

He has written a number of works of criticism including a major history of English literature,The Everyman History of English Literature, a cultural history of the twentieth century, two autobiographical works and a novel. He has also written important books of criticism on Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock and has been a prolific writer of features and reviews for many magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Observer and the New Statesman.

He is satirized as "Mr Kurtz" in James Delingpole's novel Thinly Disguised Autobiography. He has recently published a book discussing the nature of creation in western literature.

[edit] Publications

  • The Victorian Treasure House
  • A Song of Love and Death: The Meaning of Opera, New York: Poseidon Press, 1987 ISBN 0671643533

[edit] External links