P. N. Furbank
Philip Nicholas Furbank
Career
Born in Cradleigh in 1920,[2] Furbank, after having attended Reigate Grammar School, entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge. After graduating with a First in English, he served in the army. He became a corporal in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and was in Italy in 1945. He returned to Emmanuel as a teaching Fellow in 1947.[1] While in Cambridge Furbank became a close friend of the novelist E. M. Forster,[3] and also of the mathematician Alan Turing,[4] whose literary executor he would become.
Furbank moved to London in 1953 and worked as an editor and librarian. He contributed reviews to The Listener. In 1972 he became a professor of the Open University
In 1960 in London he married the poet and critic Patricia Beer. The marriage was dissolved by 1964 when she remarried.
Works
Furbank's best known work was his sympathetic and widely acclaimed biography E. M. Forster: A Life.[1] Forster had recognised that a biography was inevitable and had originally asked the novelist William Plomer to write one. Plomer found it impossible to describe Forster's sexuality and Furbank was asked instead.[1] Forster's old college, King's College, made Furbank a fellow for the two years before Forster's death in 1970 to support the writing and the biography was published in two parts in 1977 and 1978.[1]
Furbank won a
Furbank's other books include ones on the poet
References
Notes
- ^ a b c d e Hawtree, Christopher (9 July 2014). "PN Furbank obituary". the Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2018.
- ^ https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/furbank-philip-nicholas-1920
- New York Times. p. BR1. Retrieved 20 May 2011.
PN Furbank, who is preparing his biography, tells us that Forster felt large ....
- OCLC 27386110.
- ^ Sections of Italo Stevo on books.google.com Retrieved 6 January 2011
- ^ Sections of Behalf on books.google.com Retrieved 6 January 2011
External links
- List of works by Furbank on worldcat.org Retrieved on 6 January 2011
- Misreading Gulliver's Travels