Phyllis Rose (born October 26, 1942) is an American literary critic, essayist, biographer, and educator.

Early life

Phyllis Rose was born Phyllis Davidoff, the third child of Eli and Minnie P. Davidoff, and spent her childhood on the South Shore of Long Island, attending Lawrence (NY) High School. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1964 summa cum laude and spent the following year studying English literature at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

, for which work she holds an MA. She returned to Harvard to complete her graduate studies, specializing in nineteenth-century English literature and receiving a Ph.D. in 1970 with a dissertation on

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

, written under the direction of Jerome Hamilton Buckley.

Career

She began her teaching career in 1969 as an assistant professor of English at

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...

in Middletown, CT, and rose progressively to associate professor and full professor with tenure in 1976. She remained on the faculty of Wesleyan until her early retirement in 2005, spending one year (1981–82) as a visiting professor of English at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

. Rose's first book, ''Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf'', was a finalist for the National Book Award. Published in 1978, it was in the forefront of feminist re-evaluations of literary figures and generated a renewed interest among US literary critics in

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

and the Bloomsbury Group. ''Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages'', which considered the institution of marriage by exploring the marriages of five prominent Victorian writers, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1983. It details the intimate relationships and/or marriages of

Jane Welsh Jane may refer to: * Jane (given name), a feminine given name * Jane (surname), related to the given name Film and television * ''Jane'' (1915 film), a silent comedy film directed by Frank Lloyd * ''Jane'' (2016 film), a South Korean drama fi ...

and

Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy. Born in Ecclefechan, Dum ...

, Effie Grey and

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and pol ...

, Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill, Catherine Hogarth and

, and

George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...

and

George Henry Lewes George Henry Lewes (; 18 April 1817 – 30 November 1878) was an English philosopher and critic of literature and theatre. He was also an amateur physiologist. American feminist Margaret Fuller called Lewes a "witty, French, flippant sort of m ...

Anatole Broyard Anatole Paul Broyard (July 16, 1920 – October 11, 1990) was an American writer, literary critic, and editor who wrote for ''The New York Times''. In addition to his many reviews and columns, he published short stories, essays, and two books dur ...

in ''The New York Times'' called it a “brilliant and original book.” In 2018, Haley Mlotek gave the book extravagant praise in a "Letter of Recommendation" published in the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

. The research surrounding Rose's biography of the African-American dancer,

Josephine Baker Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald; naturalised French Joséphine Baker; 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted Fran ...

, titled ''Jazz Cleopatra'', was supported by a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It was published by Doubleday in 1989 and has since been translated into many languages. Rose has published countless shorter essays throughout her career, some as a guest columnist for ''The New York Times'' in 1983-84, many for ''The American Scholar'', on whose editorial board she has long served. Other essays and book reviews have appeared in ''The Atlantic'', ''The Boston Globe'', ''Vogue'', ''The New York Times Book Review'', ''USA Today'', ''The Washington Post'', ''The Yale Review'', ''Preservation'', ''Civilization'', and ''The New Republic'', among others. Her travel writing was regularly published by The Sophisticated Traveler section of ''The New York Times''. Some of her essays were collected in ''Writing of Women'' (Wesleyan University Press, 1985) and some in ''Never Say Goodbye'' (Doubleday, 1991). For ''The Norton Book of Women’s Lives'' (1993), a collection of diaries and memoirs, Rose selected the texts and wrote introductions to each author's work, as well as a general introduction to the volume. ''Library Journal'' said of it, “Because of the breadth and richness of these 61 selections, . . . this anthology is destined to become a classic.” ''The Hungry Mind Review'' called it a “magnificent, handsome, handful of an anthology.” Since publishing ''The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time'' (Scribner, 1997), an account of her engagement with Marcel Proust's '' In Search of Lost Time'', Rose has taken a long sabbatical from book-writing and devoted herself to photography, specializing in portraits. She has had two shows of her art work at the Lucky Street Gallery in Key West, Florida. In 2014, Rose published ''The Shelf: From LEQ to LES,'' an account of reading all of the novels on a particular shelf in the stacks of the New York Society Library. A Kirkus reviewer explains Rose's method as follows: “She chose the shelf on the basis of a few self-imposed rules: Several authors needed to appear, and only one could have more than five books, of which she would read three; there would be both contemporary and older works; one book needed to be a classic that she had always wanted to read.”

Elaine Showalter Elaine Showalter (born January 21, 1941) is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She influenced feminist literary criticism in the United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocr ...

wrote that "Rose turns naturally to the tools of the contemporary reader—Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Kindle, iPad—and moves easily between the shelf and the immediately accessible riches of the culture.

Personal life

Rose has a son, Ted Rose, from her first marriage, which ended in 1975. In 1990, she married

Laurent de Brunhoff Laurent de Brunhoff (born 30 August 1925) is a French author and illustrator, known primarily for continuing the Babar the Elephant series of children's books that was created by his father, Jean de Brunhoff. Early life Brunhoff was born in Pari ...

, the French-born author and illustrator of the

Babar the Elephant Babar the Elephant (, ; ) is an elephant character who first appeared in 1931 in the French children's book ''Histoire de Babar'' by Jean de Brunhoff. The book is based on a tale that Brunhoff's wife, Cécile, had invented for their children. ...

books. Since 1985, Rose has worked with him on the series.''Figaro'', "Laurent de Brunhoff: Une Vie avec Babar," December 25, 2011 They live in Key West, Florida and New York City.

Bibliography

* ''Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf'' (Oxford Univ. Press, 1978) * ''Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages'' (Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1983) * ''Writing of Women: Essays in a Renaissance'' (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1985) * ''Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time'' (Doubleday, 1989) * ''Never Say Goodbye: Essays'' (Doubleday, 1991) * ''The Norton Book of Women's Lives'' (Editor) (W. W. Norton & Co., 1993) * ''The Year of Reading Proust; A Memoir in Real Time'' (Scribner, 1997) * ''The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading'' (

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer ...

, 2014) * ''Alfred Stieglitz: Taking Pictures, Making Painters'' (Yale University Press, 2019)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rose, Phyllis 1942 births Living people American essayists American biographers Wesleyan University faculty American literary critics Women literary critics American women essayists American women biographers Lawrence High School (Cedarhurst, New York) alumni Radcliffe College alumni Yale University alumni Historians from New York (state) American women academics 21st-century American women American women critics