Sir John Frank Kermode (29 November 1919 – 17 August 2010) was a highly regarded British literary critic best known for his seminal critical work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, published in 1967 (revised 2000).
Kermode was known for many works of criticism, and also as editor of the popular Fontana Modern Masters series of introductions to modern thinkers. He was a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books.
Kermode was born on the Isle of Man, and was educated at Douglas High School and Liverpool University. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II, for six years in total, much of it in Iceland.
Kermode was a contributor for several years to the somewhat neoconservative magazine, Encounter and in 1965 became co-editor. He resigned in less than two years after it became clear that the magazine was funded by the CIA.
He subsequently pursued an academic career, becoming Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London from 1967 to 1974. Under Kermode, the UCL English Department chaired a series of graduate seminars which broke new ground by introducing for the first time contemporary French critical theory to Britain.
In 1974, Kermode took the position of King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University. He resigned the post in 1982, at least in part because of the acrimonious tenure debate surrounding Colin MacCabe. He then moved to Columbia University, where he was Julian Clarence Levi Professor Emeritus in the Humanities. From 1975 to 1976 Kermode was the Norton professor at Harvard University.
A few months before Kermode's death the scholar James Shapiro described him as "the best living reader of Shakespeare anywhere, hands down".
He was knighted in 1991.
Courtesy of Wikipedia.