John Bernard Beer (31 March 1926 – 10 December 2017) was a British

literary critic A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...

. He was emeritus professor of English literature at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

and a fellow of

Peterhouse, Cambridge Peterhouse is the oldest Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Peterhouse has around 300 undergraduate and 175 graduate stud ...

. Best known as a scholar and critic of

Romantic poets Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Neoclassical ideas of the 18th c ...

– especially

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth ...

, and

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poetry, Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romanticism, Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Balla ...

– he also published on

E. M. Forster Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author. He is best known for his novels, particularly '' A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910) and '' A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous shor ...

. He was elected a fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...

in 1994. Beer served in the RAF from 1946 to 1948. He was a junior research fellow at

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College, formally the College of St John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge, is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge, founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch L ...

, from 1955 to 1958. Between 1958 and 1964 he was assistant lecturer and then lecturer at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

. From 1964 until his retirement in 1993, he was successively lecturer, reader (1978) and professor (1987) of English literature at the

. He was married to the literary critic

Gillian Beer Dame Gillian Patricia Kempster Beer, (née Thomas; born 27 January 1935) is a British literary critic and academic. She was President of Clare Hall from 1994 to 2001, and King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Ca ...

, DBE. He was president of the Charles Lamb Society from 1989 until 2002. He was a Leverhulme emeritus fellow in 1995–1996 and was the 2006 Stanton lecturer in the philosophy of religion in the University of Cambridge.

Works

*''Coleridge, the Visionary'', Chatto & Windus, 1959
Humanities Ebooks, 2007
*''The Achievement of E. M. Forster'', Chatto & Windus, 1962

*''Blake's humanism'', Manchester University Press/Barnes & Noble, 1968; Humanities Ebooks, 2007. *''Blake's Visionary Universe'', Manchester University Press/Barnes & Noble, 1969. *''Coleridge's Poetic Intelligence'', Macmillan, 1977. *''Wordsworth and the human heart'', 1978. *''Questioning Romanticism'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. *''Post-Romantic Consciousness: Dickens to Plath'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. *''William Blake: a Literary Life'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

External links

John Beer's biographical entry in the directory of the British AcademyBiographical entry in Debrett'sReport of death
1926 births 2017 deaths Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Fellows of Peterhouse, Cambridge Fellows of the British Academy Academics of the Victoria University of Manchester Literary critics of English British literary critics 20th-century Royal Air Force personnel Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge {{UK-academic-bio-stub