John Beer

For the Anglican Archdeacon of Cambridge, seeJohn Beer (priest).

John Bernard BeerFBA(31 March 1926 – 10 December 2017) was a Britishliterary critic.He was emeritus professor of English literature at theUniversity of Cambridgeand a fellow ofPeterhouse, Cambridge.Best known as a scholar and critic ofRomantic poets– especiallyWilliam Blake,Samuel Taylor Coleridge,andWilliam Wordsworth– he also published onE. M. Forster.He was elected a fellow of theBritish Academyin 1994.

Beer served in theRAFfrom 1946 to 1948. He was a junior research fellow atSt John's College, Cambridge,from 1955 to 1958. Between 1958 and 1964 he was assistant lecturer and then lecturer at theUniversity of Manchester.From 1964 until his retirement in 1993, he was successively lecturer, reader (1978) and professor (1987) of English literature at theUniversity of Cambridge.He was married to the literary criticGillian Beer,DBE.He was president of theCharles Lamb Societyfrom 1989 until 2002. He was aLeverhulme emeritus fellowin 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.ISBN978-1-84760-044-8
• The Achievement of E. M. Forster,Chatto & Windus, 1962;Humanities Ebooks, 2007.ISBN978-1-84760-003-5
• Blake's humanism,Manchester University Press/Barnes & Noble, 1968; Humanities Ebooks, 2007.ISBN978-1-84760-000-4
• Blake's Visionary Universe,Manchester University Press/Barnes & Noble, 1969.ISBN0-7190-0390-3
• Coleridge's Poetic Intelligence,Macmillan, 1977.ISBN0-333-21312-2
• Wordsworth and the human heart,1978.ISBN978-0-231-04646-6
• Questioning Romanticism,Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.ISBN0-8018-5052-5
• Post-Romantic Consciousness: Dickens to Plath,Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.ISBN1-4039-0518-5
• William Blake: a Literary Life,Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.ISBN978-1-4039-3954-8

External links

• John Beer's biographical entry in the directory of the British Academy
• Biographical entry in Debrett's
• Report of death