The English Department and Andrew Marvell Centre are
pleased to announce a jointly organised lecture in the English
research seminar series:
Monday 24 January, 4.30 pm,
Meaux Room, Staff House (please note
change of venue)
NIGEL SMITH, William and Anne S.
Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature at
Princeton University, US:
'Andrew Marvell's sense of humour:
wit, evil and why we should read him'
Nigel Smith graduated from Hull in 1980
with a degree in English and History. He then spent nearly
twenty years in Oxford and the last eleven in Princeton.
He recently published a biography of Andrew Marvell, the
17th-century poet and campaigner for toleration, who was one of
Hull's M.P.s between 1659 and 1678. He was also a spy,
clandestine pamphleteer, satirist and had a decidedly unusual
private life, about which he was particularly secretive.
After William Wilberforce, he may be the city's most famous native,
or perhaps he is its most famous historical figure.
Smith's biography of Marvell was
published in the UK in October 2010 by Yale University
Press, was Book of the Week in The Guardian, and
has been extremely well-received in
The Independent and the London Review of
Books. Smith has been interviewed on BBC Radio 3's
Nightwaves and on BBC Radio Humberside.
Everybody welcome
For further details contact Ann Heilmann
(a.heilmann@hull.ac.uk) or Janet
Clare (j.clare@hull.ac.uk)