“It may seem unfashionable to say
so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect.
History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of
character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of
the human spirit.” – Peter Ackroyd
Born on this date in 1949, Ackroyd
is an English biographer, novelist and critic whose biographical pieces include luminaries like
William Blake, Charles Dickens and T.S. Eliot.
But his historical novels have earned him the most acclaim, including
the Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards. 
Ackroyd also is noted for the sheer
volume of his work (39 nonfiction books, 18 novels, and 4 books of poetry), and
the depth of his research.
Ackroyd also is noted for the sheer
volume of his work (39 nonfiction books, 18 novels, and 4 books of poetry), and
the depth of his research.
It was his 1982 novel The Great
Fire of London, a reworking of Dickens’ Little Dorrit (a terrific example, by the way, of the
“serial” writing style that first made Dickens popular) that put Ackroyd on the
writing map. The book set
the stage for a long sequence of novels dealing with the complex interaction of
time and space and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place.”
“I don’t think I ever read a novel
until I was 26 or 27,” he said. “I
wanted to be a poet … (and) had no interest in fiction or biography and
precious little interest in history. But
those three elements in my life have become the most important.”
No comments:
Post a Comment