Maner, Martin 1946–

(Martin W. Maner)

PERSONAL:

Born June 16, 1946, in Sturgis, MI; son of William Wallace (a foreign student advisor) and Jean Ellen (an international center administrator) Maner; married Martha Sue Hundley, December 22, 1969 (divorced, October, 1977); married Elizabeth Marie Noel Geer (a radiological technician), April 22, 1982 (divorced, October, 2003); children: Jaimie Kirsten, Karen Kelley. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Occidental College, B.A. (cum laude), 1968; University of Virginia, M.A., 1972, Ph.D., 1975.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Dayton, OH. Office—Department of English, Wright State University, Dayton, OH 45435. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Virginia, Charlottesville, lecturer in English, 1975-76; Wright State University, Dayton, OH, assistant professor, 1976-81, associate professor, 1981-89, professor of English, 1989—. Cityfolk, member of Jazz Programs committee, 1987—. Military service: U.S. Army, 1969-71; served in Vietnam; became sergeant.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association of America, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Samuel Johnson Society, Phi Beta Kappa.

WRITINGS:

The Philosophical Biographer: Doubt and Dialectic in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1988.

The Spiral Guide to Research Writing, Mayfield (Mountain View, CA), 1996.

The Research Process, Mayfield (Mountain View, CA), 2000.

Contributor of articles and reviews to literature and philology journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Martin Maner once told CA: "I enjoy research writing on virtually any topic. I believe that any subject, looked at attentively and from the right angle, can be interesting."

He later added: "I write for pleasure and for discovery. I am influenced by the concept that a work of criticism should be a small work of art. I pre-write extensively and edit relentlessly. Biography poses interesting epistemological problems."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Eighteenth-Century Studies, fall, 1992, Alexander Pettit, review of The Philosophical Biographer: Doubt and Dialectic in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, pp. 121-126.

English Studies, June, 1991, Irene Simon, review of The Philosophical Biographer, pp. 280-283.

Modern Language Review, April, 1991, Allan Ingram, review of The Philosophical Biographer, pp. 403-404.

Modern Philology, August, 1990, David Wheeler, review of The Philosophical Biographer, pp. 92-93.

Papers on Language and Literature, fall, 1992, Robert Ziegler, review of The Philosophical Biographer, pp. 457-465.

Philological Quarterly, fall, 1989, Catherine N. Parke, review of The Philosophical Biographer, pp. 527-529.