GRAY, Richard J(ohn) 1944-

PERSONAL: Born January 5, 1944; son of George Ernest and Helen (Cox) Gray; married 1965; wife's name Joyce Mary (marriage dissolved); married second wife, Sheona Catherine, 1990; children: (first marriage) Catharine Emma, Ben Thomas; (second marriage) Jessica Vivien, Jack Ewan George. Education: St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, B.A., University of Cambridge, Ph.D. Hobbies and other interests: Wine tasting, films, tennis, travel, gardening, running.

ADDRESSES: Home—Berri-Dene, Anglesea Rd., Wivenhoe, Colchester, Essex CO7 9JS, England. Office—Department of Literature, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, Cambridge, England, senior resident scholar, 1966-67; University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, England, lecturer, 1969-76, senior lecturer, 1976-1980, reader, 1981-90, professor of literature, 1990—. Member of Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi, 1979; Robert E. McNair visiting professor, University of South Carolina, 1993. British Academy, fellow, 1993—.

MEMBER: British Association for American Studies (member of executive committee, 1990—).

AWARDS, HONORS: Harkness fellowship, 1967-69; C. Hugh Holman Award, 1986.

WRITINGS:

The Literature of Memory: Modern Writers of the American South, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1977.

Writing the South: Ideas of an American Region, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1986, with a new afterword, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1997.

American Poetry of the Twentieth Century, Longman (New York, NY), 1990.

The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography, Blackwell (Cambridge, MA), 1994.

Southern Aberrations: Writers of the American South and the Problem of Regionalism, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 2000.

A History of American Literature, Blackwell (Malden, MA), 2003.

editor:

(And author of introduction) American Verse of the Nineteenth Century, Rowman & Littlefield (Totowa, NJ), 1973.

(And author of introduction) American Poetry of the Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1976.

(And author of introduction) Robert Penn Warren: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1980.

American Fiction: New Readings, Barnes & Noble (Totowa, NJ), 1983.

(And author of introduction) Edgar Allan Poe, Everyman (London, England), 1996.

(With Owen Robinson) A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South, Blackwell (Malden, MA), 2004.

other:

Journal of American Studies, associate editor, 1990; editor, 1997.

SIDELIGHTS: Richard J. Gray is a native of the United Kingdom, but his field of expertise is American literature, particularly that of the southeastern states. He offers students broad overviews in books such as A History of American Literature and American Poetry of the Twentieth Century. The former was recommended as a "scholarly but accessible history" by Ron Ratliff in Library Journal, the critic expressing his praise for the book's thorough coverage of periods and genres. American Poetry of the Twentieth Century is similarly complete, taking in "all the major American poetic movements of the twentieth century, from modernism to imagism, from the Fugitive Poets to confessional poetry, from the Beats to black poetry to the New York school. A student reading this book could not fail to get a coherent picture of these movement; [and] the major poets within them," stated Jennifer Horne in Mississippi Quarterly. The author gives in-depth explications of several poems, as well as discussing major poetic movements generally. Also, Horne described Gray's prose style as "lively, descriptive, and at times almost musical."

In Southern Aberrations: Writers of the American South and the Problems of Regionalism, Gray examines the Southern identity and numerous writers who, though they are from the South and write about that region, are generally not included in discussions of Southern literature. Edgar Allan Poe, Andrew Lytle, Erskine Caldwell, and Ellen Glasgow are all included in Gray's discourse. Commenting on the book in the Southern Literary Journal, Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr. found that "while Gray's analysis is almost always perceptive and engaging, some of it stands out as particularly intriguing. His chapter on Poe, for instance, brilliantly explores Poe's troubled and complicated relationship with the South and southern identity…. [It] is a gem of close reading informed by critical insight and cultural theory, and it is one of the best discussions we have of Poe's tortuous relationship with the South."

Gray focused on one of the South's greatest writers in his work The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography. Devoted mainly to textual criticism of the author's works, it is "a major contribution to Faulkner studies," according to Ian Jackson in Notes and Queries. While many scholars consider Faulkner's later work to be inferior to his early writing, Gray contests that judgement. Linda Wagner-Martin advised in Southern Literary Journal that Gray "is particularly convincing in reading Go down, Moses as one of Faulkner's finest works, though one in which the author's need to insist—to declaim—marked a change in style that lasted throughout most of his later writing." Wagner-Martin added: "Gray's persuasive reading of the work leads to his fully appreciative comments on the last novels."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Choice, November, 2001, A. J. Griffith, review of Southern Aberrations: Writers of the American South and the Problems of Regionalism, p. 113.

Journal of American Studies, spring, 2001, Richard H. King, review of Southern Aberrations, p. 445.

Journal of Southern History, February, 2002, Michael Kreyling, review of Southern Aberrations, p. 236.

Library Journal, May 1, 2004, Ron Ratliff, review of A History of American Literature, p. 106.

Mississippi Quarterly, fall, 1993, Jennifer Horne, review of American Poetry of the Twentieth Century, p. 677; winter, 2000, Kathryn B. McKee, review of Southern Aberrations, p. 145.

Notes and Queries, June, 1996, Ian Jackson, The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography, p. 240.

Oxford American, May-June, 2000, Marshall Boswell, review of Southern Aberrations, p. 98.

Southern Literary Journal, spring, 1999, Linda Wagner-Martin, review of The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography, p. 118; fall, 2001, Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr., review of Southern Aberrations, p. 124.

Southern Review, fall, 1986, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, review of Writing the South: Ideas of an American Region, p. 344.