Barbara Gladys Hardy, (''

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

'' Nathan; 27 June 1924 – 12 February 2016) was a British

literary scholar Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. T ...

, author, and poet. As an academic, she specialised in the literature of the 19th Century. From 1965 to 1970, she was

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of English at

Royal Holloway College Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, 21 academic departm ...

, University of London. Then, from 1970 to 1989, she was Professor of English Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Early life and education

Hardy was born on 27 June 1924 in Swansea, Wales. Her father was Maurice Nathan, a tobacconist, and her mother was Gladys Emily Ann, née Abraham. She was educated at Swansea High School for Girls, a grammar school. In February 1941, she experienced the Swansea Blitz. She studied at University College London, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1947 and a Master of Arts (MA) degree in 1949. On 16 March 1946, she married Ernest Dawson Hardy, a civil servant at the Inland Revenue. They had two children, Kate and Julia.

Honours

In 1962, Hardy was awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize by the British Academy for her monograph ''The Novels of George Eliot''. In 1988 she delivered the British Academy's Sarah Tryphena Phillips Lecture in American Literature and History. In 1997, she was awarded the Sagittarius Prize by the Society of Authors for her novel ''London Lovers''. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1997, and a Senior Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2006.

Selected works

; Academic * * * * * ; Personal * * ;Poetry *''Dante's Ghosts'' (Paekakariki Press, 2013)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hardy, Barbara 1924 births 2016 deaths British academics of English literature 20th-century British poets 20th-century British novelists Academics of Royal Holloway, University of London Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Fellows of the British Academy Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Writers from Swansea Alumni of University College London 20th-century British women writers Women literary historians British women historians