Robert Bernard Martin

Robert Bernard Martin (1918–1999) was an American scholar and biographer, specializing in Victorian literature.

Life

Robert Bernard Martin was born September 11, 1918, in La Harpe, Illinois, to Carl and Maggie Martin. He graduated from high school in Davenport and received his A.B. summa cum laude from the University of Iowa in 1943. During World War II he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in Italy and France. He was Professor Emeritus of English at Princeton University from 1951 to 1975, when he retired to Oxford.

Martin published several books about the Victorian era, including biographies of Alfred Tennyson, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edward Fitzgerald. His life of Tennyson won the James Tait Black Award and the Duff Cooper Prize.

Works

• The Triumph of Wit: Study of Victorian Comic Theory, (1974)
• Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart, (1980)
• With Friends Possessed: A Life of Edward Fitzgerald, (1985)
• The Accents of Persuasion: Charlotte Bronte's Novels
• Enter Rumour, (Four Early Victorian Scandals)
• The Dust of Combat (A Life of Charles Kingsley)
• Victorian poetry; ten major poets