Peter Ackroyd

Paul Smethurst (University of Hong Kong)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949 and educated at St. Benedict’s School, Ealing. He graduated from Clare College, Cambridge with a Double First in English and then won a research fellowship to study at Yale University from 1971-73. At Cambridge Ackroyd’s main interest was poetry. He claims to have had little interest in fiction and did not start reading novels seriously until he was appointed literary editor at the

Spectator

, where he was to work from 1973 to 1981. In 1986 he was appointed chief book reviewer of the

Times

. Today Ackroyd is best known for his six biographies and ten novels, but before his first novel was published he had three collections of poems to his name,

Ouch

(1971),

London Lickpenny

(1973) and

Country Life

(1978). Most of these are now available in a…

3178 words

Citation: Smethurst, Paul. "Peter Ackroyd". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 September 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=15, accessed 19 March 2024.]

15 Peter Ackroyd 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.