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

Career

Painter was born in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

, England. His father was a schoolmaster, and his mother was an artist. He studied classics at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

, and later lectured in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

at the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

for one year. From 1938 until

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

and again after the war, he took a position as deputy curator of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

'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 The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or occasionally poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Ca ...

. His later work ''Chateaubriand: Volume 1 – The Longed-For Tempests'' was awarded the 1977

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Uni ...

In popular culture

*His poem "The Lobster" was adapted into a song by the English folk-rock band Fairport Convention, on their self-titled debut album.

Bibliography

*1951: ''

André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism ...

: 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: ''

: Marshlands and Prometheus Misbound: two satires''. London: Secker & Warburg (translation) *1956: ''Marcel Proust: Letters to his Mother'' (translation) London: Rider *1959: '' Marcel Proust: a biography''. Vol. 1. London: Chatto & Windus, *1965: '' Marcel Proust: 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. ...

and the Tartar Relation'' (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 William Caxton ( – ) was an English merchant, diplomat and writer. He is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England, in 1476, and as a printer to be the first English retailer of printed books. His parentage a ...

: 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 {{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