Christopher Ricks, William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of Humanities, Boston University

Christopher Ricks is the author of Milton's Grand Style (1963), Tennyson, Keats and Embarrassment, The Force of Poetry, T.S.Eliot and Prejudice, Beckett's Dying Words, Essays in Appreciation, Allusion to the Poets, Dylan's Visions of Sin, and True Friendship. He edited The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse and The Oxford Book of English Verse, The Poems of Tennyson, and (with Lisa Nemrow and Julie Nemrow) Bob Dylan: The Lyrics, as well as (with Jim McCue) The Poems of T.S.Eliot (2015).

"[Rick's] magisterially assured account of the heroic, in the English heoic line (or the iambic pentameter) and in the heroic writer, amounts to an affirmation of the supreme body of writers and readers, spanning the centuries with the ebb and flow of their subtly modulated exchanges. ... it is richly absorbing" - Dinah Birch, Times Literary Supplement

"The depth and delicacy of Ricks's critical tracery — he both traces allusions and weaves them together — are enough to make one feel stupid for not having seen it all before." - Colin Burrow, London Review of Books

"Ricks corrects easy critical assumptions in ways that would entertain any literature lover [... ] Ricks' close readings go beyond mere opinion: he is showing you exactly what the poet was up to." - John Mullan, Prospect

"Ricks, our greatest living critic, restores a world to coherence that seemed to be dissolving into the Twittersphere" - Lee Oser, Literary Matters

"Full of verbal fireworks, witty quick-changing tones, highly stimulating to say the least." - William H. Pritchard, Hudson Review