Ellmann, Richard 1918-87
US biographer and academic

Born in Detroit, Michigan, he graduated from Yale, and after World War II lived in Dublin for a year, where he wrote his first book, Yeats; the Man and the Mask (1948). Some 10 years later came his masterful biography of James Joyce, now accepted as one of the great 20th-century biographies, as much for its elegant composition as its astute judgement and erudition. A professor at Northwestern University, Illinois, until 1968, he moved to Oxford in 1970 as Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature, remaining there until his death. His biography of Oscar Wilde (1987), a 20-year labour of love, was published posthumously to wide acclaim. Selected essays were published under the title, a long the riverrun in 1988.

Bibliography: Literary Biography: inaugural lecture (pamphlet, 1971)