George Duncan Painter

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(5 June 1914 – 8 December 2005), known as George D. Painter, was an English author most famous as a biographer of

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...

Career

Painter was born in Birmingham, England. His father was a schoolmaster, and his mother was an artist. He studied classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later lectured in Latin at the University of Liverpool for one year. From 1938 until World War II and again after the war, he took a position as deputy curator of the British Museum's incunabula department. His two-volume biography of Proust was published in 1959 and 1965. According to

Miron Grindea Miron Grindea (31 January 1909 – 18 November 1995) was a Romanian-born literary journalist and the editor of '' ADAM International Review'', a literary magazine published for more than 50 years. In 1984 ''ADAM'' was said to be "the world's lon ...

, this was "rightly greeted as one of the great achievements in literary history", and it is still widely considered to be one of the finest literary biographies in the English language.Smith, Dinitia (2000-04-13) "Why Proust? And Why Now?", ''The New York Times''. Its second volume won the Duff Cooper Prize. His later work ''Chateaubriand: Volume 1 – The Longed-For Tempests'' was awarded the 1977 James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

In popular culture

*His poem "The Lobster" was adapted into a song by the English folk-rock band

Fairport Convention Fairport Convention are an English folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater (with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig.) They started o ...

, on their self-titled debut album.

Bibliography

*1951: '' André Gide: a critical and biographical study''Details taken from a copy of ''Marcel Proust: a biography'', London: Chatto and Windus (1959) - no ISBN London: Arthur Barker **Revised and enlarged. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1968) **Translations into French (1968) and Italian (1969) *1951: ''The Road to Sinodun: a winter and summer monodrama'' (poems) London: Rupert Hart-Davis *1953: '' André Gide: Marshlands and Prometheus Misbound: two satires''. London: Secker & Warburg (translation) *1956: ''Marcel Proust: Letters to his Mother'' (translation) London: Rider *1959: ''

: a biography''. Vol. 1. London: Chatto & Windus, *1965: ''

: a biography''. Vol. 2. London: Chatto & Windus **Translations into German (1962 & 1968), Italian (1965), French (1966), Spanish (1967), and Polish (1972) *1965: ''The

Vinland Map The Vinland Map was claimed to be a 15th-century mappa mundi with unique information about Norse exploration of North America but is now known to be a 20th-century forgery. The map first came to light in 1957 and was acquired by Yale University. I ...

and the

Tartar Relation The ''Tartar Relation'' (Latin: ''Hystoria Tartarorum'', "History of the Tartars") is an ethnographic report on the Mongol Empire composed by a certain C. de Bridia in Latin in 1247. It is one of the most detailed accounts of the history and cus ...

'' (with R. A. Skelton and Thomas E. Marston). New Haven: Yale University Press. Painter contributed: ''The Tartar Relation'', edited, with introduction, translation and commentary; ''The Tartar Relation and the Vinland Map: an interpretation'' (New ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. ) *1976: '' William Caxton: a quincentenary biography of England's first printer''. London: Chatto & Windus, *1977: '' Chateaubriand: a biography; Vol. 1: 1768–93; The longed-for tempests''. London: Chatto & Windus,

References

External links

"George Painter"
Fellows Remembered,

The Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, elec ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Painter, George 1914 births 2005 deaths People educated at King Edward VI Aston School Academics of the University of Liverpool English biographers James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients Employees of the British Library 20th-century biographers Officers of the Order of the British Empire