Richard Ellmann facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Richard Ellmann
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Photo of Richard Ellmann
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Richard David Ellmann
March 15, 1918 Highland Park, Michigan, U.S.
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| Died | May 13, 1987 (aged 69) |
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| Spouse(s) | Mary Ellmann |
| Children | 3, including Lucy Ellmann |
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Richard David Ellmann (born March 15, 1918 – died May 13, 1987) was an American writer. He was known for writing about famous Irish authors. These included James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats.
Ellmann won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book James Joyce in 1959. This book is seen as one of the best literary biographies of the 20th century. A revised version of the book won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1982. Ellmann was a liberal humanist, meaning he believed in human values and reason. His work focused on important writers from the 20th century.
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Life of Richard Ellmann
Richard Ellmann was born in Highland Park, Michigan. He was the second of three sons. His father, James Isaac Ellman, was a lawyer. His mother, Jeanette, was from a Jewish family in Ukraine. His father's family was from Romania.
Ellmann served in the United States Navy during World War II. He also worked for the Office of Strategic Services, which was a U.S. spy agency.
He went to Yale University and earned several degrees. He received his bachelor's degree in 1939. He got his master's degree in 1941 and his PhD in 1947. He also studied at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. There, he researched for his book about the poet Yeats.
Ellmann was a very good student. He was part of honor societies like Phi Beta Kappa. He also worked on the Yale Literary Magazine.
Later, Ellmann taught at Yale University. He also taught at Northwestern University and the University of Oxford. From 1980 until he died, he was a professor at Emory University. He was also a professor at Oxford University from 1970 to 1984.
Ellmann was a Fellow of the British Academy. This is a high honor for experts in the humanities and social sciences.
He used his deep knowledge of Irish literature to write Four Dubliners: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett (1987). This book was a collection of essays about four famous Irish writers.
Richard Ellmann married Mary Donoghue in 1949. She was also a writer. They had three children: Stephen, Maud, and Lucy. Stephen and Maud became academics. Lucy became a novelist and writing teacher.
Ellmann passed away in Oxford on May 13, 1987. He was 69 years old. He died from a disease called motor neurone disease.
Many of Ellmann's writings and personal items are kept at the University of Tulsa's McFarlin Library. Other important papers are at Northwestern University's Library.
Books About Writers
Richard Ellmann was famous for his biographies. These are books that tell the life story of a person.
About Yeats
In his book Yeats: The Man and the Masks, Ellmann wrote about the poet W. B. Yeats. He talked to Yeats's wife, George Yeats. He also used many of Yeats's unpublished writings. This helped him understand the poet's life and work.
About Joyce
Ellmann is perhaps most famous for his book about James Joyce. The writer Anthony Burgess called James Joyce "the greatest literary biography of the century." Another Irish novelist, Edna O'Brien, said that few people could understand Joyce's difficult book Finnegans Wake. She said Richard Ellmann was one of the few who did.
About Wilde
Ellmann finished his book about Oscar Wilde just before he died. This book, titled Oscar Wilde, won several awards after his death. It won a U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award in 1988. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1989.
The book was later used to make the 1997 movie Wilde. Many people consider Oscar Wilde to be the best book about Oscar Wilde. However, because Ellmann was very ill, he rushed to finish it. This means the book has some small factual errors.
The Richard Ellmann Lectures
After Richard Ellmann died, a special lecture series was started in his honor. These are called The Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature. They are held at Emory University.
Richard Ellmann Lecturers
Many famous writers and thinkers have given these lectures:
- 1988 Seamus Heaney
- 1990 Denis Donoghue
- 1992 Anthony Burgess
- 1994 Helen Vendler
- 1996 Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- 1999 A. S. Byatt
- 2001 David Lodge
- 2004 Salman Rushdie
- 2006 Mario Vargas Llosa
- 2008 Umberto Eco
- 2010 Margaret Atwood
- 2013 Paul Simon
- 2017 Colm Tóibín
See also
In Spanish: Richard Ellmann para niños
