John Sutherland (author) explained
John Andrew Sutherland (born 9 October 1938)[1] is a British academic, newspaper columnist and author. He is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London.
Biography
After graduating from the University of Leicester in 1964, Sutherland gained a PhD from the University of Edinburgh,[2] where he began his academic career as an assistant lecturer.[3] He specialises in Victorian fiction, 20th-century literature, and the history of publishing. Among his works of scholarship is the Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (known in the US as Stanford Companion, 1989), a comprehensive encyclopaedia of Victorian fiction. A second edition was published in 2009 with 900 biographical entries, synopses of over 600 novels, and extensive background material on publishers, reviewers, and readers.[4]
Apart from writing regularly for The Guardian newspaper, Sutherland has published a number of books of literary scholarship and is editing the forthcoming Oxford Companion to Popular Fiction. The series of books which starts with Is Heathcliff a Murderer? has brought him a wide readership. The books in the series are collections of essays about classic fiction from the Victorian period. Carefully going over the text, Sutherland highlights apparent inconsistencies, anachronisms and oversights, and explains references which the modern reader is likely to overlook. In some cases, he demonstrates the likelihood that the author simply forgot a minor detail. In others, apparent slips on the part of the author are presented as evidence that something is going on below the surface of the book which is not explicitly described (such as his explanation for why Sherlock Holmes should mis-address Miss Stoner as Miss Roylott in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band").
In 2001, he published Last Drink to LA, a chronicle of his alcoholism, drug addiction, and return to sobriety. In 2004, he published a biography of Stephen Spender. In 2005, he was involved in Dot Mobile's project to translate summaries and quotes of classic literature into text messaging shorthand.[5] [6] In the same year, he was also Chair of Judges for the Man Booker Prize, despite having caused some controversy in 1999 when he revealed details of disagreements between his fellow judges in his Guardian column.[7] In 2007, he published an autobiography, The Boy Who Loved Books. The same year, his annotated edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Black Arrow was released by Penguin Books. In 2011, he published Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives, an 800-page book containing 294 idiosyncratic sketches of famous and lesser-known novelists selected from the past 400 years.
He has also provided the forewords and introductions to a number of titles in the Oxford World's Classics series; for authors such as William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins. Similarly for various titles published by Penguin Classics, the Folio Society and others.A number of his earlier books have the author as "J. Sutherland" or "J. A. Sutherland", and should not be confused with the scholar James R. Sutherland who was also a Lord Northcliffe Professor.
Partial bibliography
- Thackeray at Work, Athlone Press, 1974,
- Victorian Novelists and Publishers, Athlone Press, 1976,
- Fiction and the Fiction Industry, Athlone Press, 1978,
- Bestsellers: Popular Fiction of the 1970's, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981,
- Offensive Literature: Decensorship in Britain 1960-1982, Junction Books, 1982,
- The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction, Longman, 1988; or (US edition) The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction, Stanford University Press, 1989. (revised edition, 2009)
- Mrs Humphry Ward
Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian, Oxford University Press, 1990, online copy
- Victorian Fiction: Writers, Publishers, Readers, Palgrave Macmillan, 1995,
- The Life of Walter Scott. A Critical Biography, Wiley-Blackwell, 1995,
- The Oxford Book of English Love Stories, Oxford University Press, 1996, (editor)
- Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Puzzles in Nineteenth-century Fiction, Oxford University Press, 1996,
- Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? More Puzzles in Classic Fiction, Oxford University Press, 1997,
- Where Was Rebecca Shot? Puzzles, Curiosities and Conundrums in Modern Fiction, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998,
- Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? Further Puzzles in Classic Fiction, Oxford University Press, 1999
- Henry V, War Criminal? & Other Shakespeare Puzzles, (w/ Cedric Watts), Oxford University Press, 2000,
- The Literary Detective: 100 Puzzles in Classic Fiction, Oxford University Press, 2000, (omnibus edition)
- Last Drink to LA, Faber and Faber, 2001,
- Literary Lives: Intimate Biographies of the Famous by the Famous, Oxford University Press, 2001, (editor)
- Reading the Decades: Fifty Years of British History Through the Nation's Bestsellers, BBC Books, 2002,
- Stephen Spender
The Authorized Biography, Viking, 2004,
- How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide, Profile, 2006,
- The Boy Who Loved Books: A Memoir, John Murray, 2007,
- Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2007,
- Curiosities of Literature: A Book-lover's Anthology of Literary Erudition, Random House, 2008,
- So You Think You Know Jane Austen? A Literary Quizbook, Oxford University Press, 2009, (with Deirdre Le Faye)
- 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know, Quercus, 2010, ; or (US edition) How Literature Works: 50 Key Concepts, Oxford University Press, 2011,
- Love, Sex, Death and Words: Surprising Tales from a Year in Literature, Icon Books, 2010, (with Stephen Fender)
- Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives, Profile Books, 2011,
- Stephen Spender: New Selected Journals, 1939-1995, Faber & Faber, 2012, (editor with Lara Feigel)
- The Connell Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, Connell Publishing, 2012, (with Jolyon Connell)
- The Connell Guide to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, Connell Publishing, 2012, (with Jolyon Connell)
- The Connell Guide to Jane Austen's Emma, Connell Publishing, 2012, (with Jolyon Connell)
- The Dickens Dictionary: An A-Z of Britain's Greatest Novelist, Icon Books, 2012,
- A Little History of Literature, Yale University Press, 2013,
- The Connell Guide to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, Connell Publishing, 2014, (with Susanna Hislop)
- How to be Well Read, Random House Books, 2014,
- Jumbo
The Unauthorised Biography of a Victorian Sensation, Aurum Press, 2014,
- How Good is Your Grammar?, Short Books, 2015,
- The War on the Old, Biteback, 2016,
- Orwell's Nose: A Pathological Biography, Reaktion Books, 2016,
- The War on the Young, Biteback, 2018,
- The Connell Guide to Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Connell Publishing, 2018, (with Jolyon Connell)
- Literary Landscapes: Charting the Worlds of Classical Literature, Black Dog & Leventhal, 2018, (General editor)
- Rogue Publisher, 'The Prince of Puffers': The Life and Works of the Publisher Henry Colburn, EER, 2018,
- The Secret Trollope: Anthony Trollope Uncovered, EER, 2019,
- Monica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me: Her Life and Long Loves, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021,
- Triggered Literature: Cancellation, Stealth Censorship and Cultural Warfare, Biteback, 2023,
Notes and References
- Who's Who 2002.
- J. A.. Sutherland. 1973. Thackeray at work. PhD. en. 1842/17669.
- http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/columnist/story/0,9826,1209332,00.html "40 years on" (retirement thoughts)
- Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction, 2nd edition, 2009,
- Web site: Crown . Sarah . Shkspr in2 txt - wnt hlp w hmwk bt wil mk us laf ;) . The Guardian . 14 November 2023 . 17 November 2005.
- Web site: Milmo . Cahal . Literature's gr8 txts edited 4 the mobile generation . The Independent . en . 14 November 2023 . 17 November 2005.
- News: Protests at 'infuriating' Booker judge. Reynolds. Nigel. 5 January 2005. The Daily Telegraph. 10 May 2018.
