Quick Facts
Biography
Philip Nicholas Furbank FRSL (/ˈfɜːrˌbæŋk/; 23 May 1920 – 27 June 2014) was an English writer, scholar and critic, and a professor (later emeritus) of the Open University.
Works
He was known for significant biographies, including E. M. Forster: A Life (1977/8), and Diderot: A Critical Biography (1992), which won a Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. He has also edited the works of Daniel Defoe and made major contributions to the question of attributions to Defoe in A Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe, The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe, and A Political Biography of Daniel Defoe all co-written with W. R. Owens, in addition to many others on aspects of Defoe.
He was a friend of Alan Turing, becoming his Executor, and general editor of Turing's collected works. He was also known as a reviewer.
Furbank's other books include ones on the poet Mallarmé and the painter Poussin, Italo Svevo: The Man and the Writer (1966) and Behalf (1999) on political thought.