Michael Edwards (literary scholar)

Insignia of a Knight Bachelor

Sir Michael Edwards OBE (born 1938) is a British poet and academic.

Edwards was born in Barnes, London.^[1] He was educated at Kingston Grammar School^[1] and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he studied French and Spanish. He wrote his doctorate on Jean Racine, completing it in Paris. He was the longtime Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Warwick until 2002, when he was elected to a chair in the Study of Literary Creation in the English Language at the Collège de France.

Edwards was elected to one of the 40 seats of the Académie française on 21 February 2013, becoming the first English person to do so.^[2][3] He had been nominated previously in 2008.^[4] He received the second highest number of votes in the fourth and final round of voting (eight votes, behind Michel Schneider who received 10) but no candidate secured a majority so the seat remained vacant on that occasion.^[5][6]

Edwards was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to UK–French cultural relations.^[7][8]

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