Richard Ellmann (Richard David Ellmann) Biography

American biographer and critic, born in Detroit, educated at Yale. In the course of a distinguished academic career he taught at Harvard and Northwestern University and was Goldsmith's Professor of English Literature at Oxford from 1970 to 1984. Yeats: The Man and the Masks (1948) established him as a critic of importance. His other works on W. B. Yeats include Eminent Domain (1967), a study of the poet in relation to Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and W. H. Auden. He became widely known for James Joyce (1959, revised edition 1982), which is regarded by many as pre-eminent among modern literary biographies. The posthumous appearance of Oscar Wilde (1987) confirmed his reputation as a biographer. Among his other works are Golden Codgers (1973), biographical studies of leading exponents of literary Modernism.