Life
He was born in Beckenham and studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first in English. He served in the Green Howards in the British Army in 1953/4 in Egypt. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Worcester College, Oxford, moving in 1968, after a sabbatical year at Stanford University, to become Professor of English at the University of Bristol.
During his time at Bristol he worked on Keats and Embarrassment (1974), in which he made the then revelatory connection between the letters and the poetry. It was also at Bristol that he first published his still-definitive edition of Tennyson's poetry. In 1975, Ricks moved to the University of Cambridge, where he was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature, before leaving for Boston University in 1986. In June 2011 it was announced he would join the professoriate of New College of the Humanities, a private college in London.
He was knighted in the 2009 Birthday Honours.
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Famous quotes containing the word life:
“You must, to get through life well, practice industry with economy, never create a debt for anything that is not absolutely necessary, and if you make a promise to pay money at a day certain, be sure to comply with it. If you do not, you lay yourself liable to have your feelings injured and your reputation destroyed with the just imputation of violating your word.”
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“In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man’s skin,—seven or eight ancestors at least, and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)