Gillian Beer

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British literary critic and academic

title: "Gillian Beer" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1935-births", "living-people", "alumni-of-st-anne's-college,-oxford", "british-literary-critics", "british-women-literary-critics", "dames-commander-of-the-order-of-the-british-empire", "fellows-of-the-british-academy", "fellows-of-clare-hall,-cambridge", "fellows-of-girton-college,-cambridge", "international-members-of-the-american-philosophical-society", "fellows-of-the-american-academy-of-arts-and-sciences", "writers-from-surrey", "fellows-of-the-royal-society-of-literature", "rose-mary-crawshay-prize-winners", "presidents-of-clare-hall,-cambridge", "academics-of-royal-holloway,-university-of-london", "20th-century-british-non-fiction-writers", "20th-century-british-women-writers", "21st-century-british-non-fiction-writers", "21st-century-british-women-writers", "king-edward-vii-professors-of-english-literature"] description: "British literary critic and academic" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Beer" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary British literary critic and academic ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox officeholder"]

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nameDame Gillian Beer
honorific-suffixDBE FBA
birth_date
birth_placeSurrey, England
module{{Infobox officeholder
office15th President of Clare Hall, Cambridge
term_start11994
term_end12001
predecessor1Anthony Low
successor1Ekhard Salje
::

| name = Dame Gillian Beer | honorific-suffix = DBE FBA | birth_name = | birth_date = | birth_place = Surrey, England | module = {{Infobox officeholder | embed = yes | office1 = 5th President of Clare Hall, Cambridge | term_start1 = 1994 | term_end1 = 2001 | predecessor1 = Anthony Low | successor1 = Ekhard Salje

Dame Gillian Patricia Kempster Beer, (née Thomas; born 27 January 1935) is a British literary critic and academic. She was President of Clare Hall from 1994 to 2001, and King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge from 1994 to 2002.

Early life

Born Gillian Patricia Kempster Thomas in Surrey, England, Beer studied English Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford.

Academic career

Following teaching posts at Bedford College, London, and the University of Liverpool, she was a fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, for 30 years. She was later King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge, and later president of Clare Hall, the University of Cambridge's distinctive, international postgraduate college.

She served as chair of the judges for the Booker Prize in 1997.

Her most intensive literary criticism lies in the field of Victorian studies. Darwin's Plots (1983), in particular, related the form of Victorian novels to Darwinist thinking. Its significance as a work was confirmed by the publication of a second edition by Cambridge University Press in 2000 and a third edition in 2009. She has also written important collections of essays on Virginia Woolf (The Common Ground, 1996) and on other aspects of the relations of literature, science, and other academic disciplines.

Honours and awards

Family

She married the literary critic John Beer in September 1962; they have three sons.

Literary criticism

  • Meredith: A Change of Masks (1970)
  • Darwin's Plots (1983)
  • George Eliot (1986)
  • Arguing with the Past (1989)
  • Open Fields (1996)
  • Virginia Woolf: The Common Ground (1996)
  • Alice in Space: The Sideways Victorian World of Lewis Carroll (2016)

Bibliography

:A full bibliography of Gillian Beer's work may be found in:

References

Sources

  • MacLeod, Donald. "Dame Gillian Beer", The Guardian (29 June 2004).

References

  1. "Gillian P K Thomas". Ancestry.com.
  2. "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter B". American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
  3. (2023-09-01). "Beer, Dame Gillian".
  4. "APS Member History".
  5. "Honorary Degrees". Harvard University.
  6. [https://english.uiowa.edu/resources/events/truman-capote-award-literary-criticism-gillian-beer "Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism: Gillian Beer"], University of Iowa, 19 October 2017.
  7. "Honorary Awards".
  8. "Gillian P K Thomas". Ancestry.com.

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