Valentine Cunningham

Valentine Cunningham

Valentine Cunningham is Oxford University Professor Emeritus of English language and Literature, and Emeritus Fellow in English at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He has held visiting professorships in the USA, Canada, Australia, Romania, and (especially) in Germany, and has lectured widely in Europe, the USA, South America, India and Canada. His many books are about Victorian Fiction, Victorian Poetry, the 1930s, King Lear, and Literary Theory. His editions include Victorian Poetry, Spanish Civil War writing, and Adam Bede. He’s the author of numerous scholarly articles and essays and introductions to literary works. He has judged many literary prizes including the Booker Prize (twice), The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and the Irish IMPAC International Fiction Prize.

He reviews widely for UK and US newspapers and journals, and broadcasts frequently, mainly for BBC radio, on literary and musicological matters. In the 2017 New Year’s Honours he was appointed OBE for ‘services to scholarship and the understanding of the humanities’. He is currently compiling an A to Z Guide to Robinson Crusoe, and writing a Literary Life of Dickens.