Dame Hermione Lee (born 29 February 1948) is a British biographer, literary critic and academic. She is a former President of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a former Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature in the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of New College. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature.

Early life and education

Born in Winchester, Hampshire, daughter of Benjamin Lee (1922-2019), of Polish and Lithuanian Jewish parentage, and Josephine, née Anderson (died 2003), Lee grew up in London, where her father was a GP. She was educated at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, City of London School for Girls, and Queen's College, London. She took a first-class degree in English Literature at St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1968 and an MPhil at St Cross College, Oxford, in 1970.

Academic career

Lee has taught at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, at the University of Liverpool (where she was awarded an Honorary DLitt in 2002) and at the University of York, from 1977 to 1998, where she held a personal chair in the Department of English and Related Literature, and where she received an Honorary DLitt in 2007.

Since 1998, she has been the Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature and the first woman Professorial Fellow of New College, Oxford. She succeeded Sir Gareth Roberts as the sixth President of Wolfson College, Oxford, in 2008, serving until the end of academic year 2016–17. She is a lifetime Honorary Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.

Honours and fellowships

Lee is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's and St Cross College, Oxford; and again to Dame Grand Cross (GBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to English literature.

In the US, Lee has been a Visiting Fellow teaching at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, a Whitney J. Oates Fellow at the Council for the Humanities at Princeton, an Everett Helm Visiting Fellow at the Lilly Library at the Indiana University at Bloomington, and the Mel and Lois Tukman Fellow of the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers in 2004–05. In 2003, she became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Writing

Lee has written widely on women writers, American literature, life-writing, and modern fiction. Her books include The Novels of Virginia Woolf (1977); a study of the Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen (1981, revised 1999); a short critical book, the first published in Britain, on Philip Roth (1982) and a critical biography of the American novelist Willa Cather, Willa Cather: A Life Saved Up (1989, reissued in a revised edition by Virago in 2008).

She published a major biography of Virginia Woolf (1996), which won the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize,

She has edited and introduced numerous editions and anthologies of Kipling, Trollope, Virginia Woolf, Stevie Smith, Elizabeth Bowen, Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, and Penelope Fitzgerald. She was one of the co-editors of the Oxford Poets Anthologies from 1999 to 2002.

Lee is also known for her reviews, including for The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, and her work in the media. From 1982 to 1986, she presented Channel Four's first books programme, Book Four, and she contributes regularly to Front Row and other radio arts programmes.

It was announced in 2021 that Chatto & Windus had signed a deal with Lee for her biography of writer Anita Brookner.

Personal life

Lee is married to Professor John Barnard, Professor Emeritus of the University of Leeds.

Awards

  • 1997 – Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for Virginia Woolf
  • 2003 – Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)
  • 2015 – Plutarch Award for Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life
  • 2023 – Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE)

Partial bibliography

  • The Novels of Virginia Woolf (1977; reissued 2009)
  • Elizabeth Bowen: An Estimation 'Critical Studies' series (1981; revised 1999)
  • Philip Roth 'Contemporary Writers' series (1982)
  • Willa Cather: A Life Saved Up (1989)
  • US edition: Willa Cather: Double Lives (1990)
  • Virginia Woolf (1996)
  • Body Parts: Essays on Life-Writing (2005)
  • Virginia Woolf's Nose: Essays on Biography (2005)
  • Edith Wharton (2007)
  • Biography: A Very Short Introduction (2009)
  • Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life (2013)
  • Lives of Houses editor, with Kate Kennedy (2020)
  • Tom Stoppard: A Life (2020)

References

  • Wolfson Presidency
  • "Queen's birthday honours list 2013: GCB, DBE and CBE", The Guardian, 15 June 2013.