Richards, Ivor Armstrong

(1893-1970)

   Richards was born at Sandbach, Cheshire, the son of an engineer. He read moral sciences at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and graduated in 1915. His studies were interrupted by tuberculosis and a long period of recuperation. He lectured on English and moral sciences at Cambridge from 1922 to 1929 and co-authored The Foundations of Aesthetics (1922). He achieved great fame as an influential literary theorist of critical writing, with an emphasis on basic English and a new way of reading poetry; his Principles of Literary Criticism was published in 1925. He was visiting professor from 1929 to 1930 at Tsing Hua University in Peking and again from 1936 to 1938 at the Orthological Institute in Peking. He was a Harvard University professor of poetry from 1944 to 1963. He received honorary degrees from Cambridge and Harvard and was made a Companion of Honor in 1964. He died at Cambridge, England. His poetry publications: Goodbye Earth, and Other Poems, 1958. The Screens, 1960. Internal Colloquies, 1972. Some of his poems: "End of a Course," "Nothing at All," "Spendthrift," "Trinity Brethren Attend," "Warhead Wakes," "Zarathustra."

   Sources: Contemporary Religious Poetry. Paul Ramsey, ed. Paulist Press, 1987. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Poetry for Pleasure: A Choice of Poetry and Verse on a Variety of Themes. Ian Parsons, ed. W.W. Norton, 1977. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. World Poetry: An Antholog y of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time. Katharine Washburn and John S. Major, eds. Publisher, 1338, 1998.