Matthew Sturgis Explained

Matthew Sturgis (born 1960)^[1] is a British historian and biographer.

Early life

Sturgis earned a degree in history at the University of Oxford.^[2]

Career

Sturgis has written art criticism for Harpers & Queen, travel journalism for The Sunday Telegraph, book reviews for The Independent, and cartoons for the Oldie and the Daily Mail.^[2]

The Independent called his 1998 Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography "impressively researched".^[3]

Reviewing Walter Sickert: A Life, Sickert scholar Richard Shone concluded, "At last Sickert has the biography he deserves".^[4] Another reviewer found Sturgis "marvelous in capturing the sparkling eccentricities of his subject along with the changing fads and fashions to which Sickert was throughout his long life so sensitive".^[5]

Reviewing Oscar: A Life in The Guardian, Anthony Quinn wrote "he is a tremendous orchestrator of material, fastidious, unhurried, indefatigable."^[6] The Evening Standard, called it "sympathetic and insightful", and "much better" than the last major biography of Wilde, by Richard Ellman thirty years earlier.^[7]

Personal life

He is married to the art dealer and gallerist Rebecca Hossack, and they live in a Georgian house in Fitzrovia, London.^[8]

Publications

• 1992 and All This, Macmillan, 1991
• Passionate Attitudes: The English Decadence of the 1890s, Macmillan, 1995^[2]
• Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography, 1998^[3]
• 1900 House: Featuring Extracts from the Personal Diaries of Joyce and Paul Bowler and Their Family with Mark McCrum, Macmillan, London, 1999.
• Walter Sickert: A Life, 2005^[2]
• Oscar: A Life, Head of Zeus, 2018. Published in the U.S. as Oscar Wilde: A Life, Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.

Notes and References

1. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/sturgis-matthew-1960 Encyclopedia.com
2. Web site: Matthew Sturgis. HarperCollins Publishers: World-Leading Book Publisher. 5 December 2018.
3. Web site: Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography, By Matthew Sturgis. https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220512/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/aubrey-beardsley-a-biography-by-matthew-sturgis-6295210.html . 12 May 2022 . subscription . live. 27 January 2012. The Independent. 5 December 2018.
4. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-painter-properly-portrayed/ Shone, Richard, "The painter properly portrayed", The Spectator, 12 February 2005
5. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20064695 Fox, Paul, untitled review in South Atlantic Review, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Fall 2005), pp. 152-155
6. Web site: Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis – review. Anthony. Quinn. 1 October 2018. 5 December 2018. www.theguardian.com.
7. Web site: Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis – review. 11 October 2018. Evening Standard. 5 December 2018.
8. Web site: The London Magazine. www.thelondonmagazine.co.uk. 5 December 2018.