Peter Martin (professor)

Peter Martin (born 1940) is an American scholar of English literature. He has been a professor at Miami University, the College of William & Mary, and Principia College.^[1] For several years, he was a historian for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

He has written several books on historical and biographical topics, including Samuel Johnson: A Biography and A Life of James Boswell. He has also written about Edmond Malone, gardens and gardening in Williamsburg and Colonial Virginia, and 'the dictionary wars' in American lexicography.

Martin was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and educated there and in the United States. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Syracuse University. For much of his research and early work he was mentored by Maynard Mack of Yale University. He has lived in Bury, West Sussex since 1972, which is the setting for A Dog Called Perth, his account of his beloved pet beagle.

Bibliography

• Martin, Peter, ed. (1984). British and American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century: Eighteen Illustrated Essays. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-87935-105-2.
• Martin, Peter (1984). Pursuing Innocent Pleasures: The Gardening World of Alexander Pope. Archon Books. ISBN 978-0-208-02011-6.
• Martin, Peter (1991). The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-2053-5.
• Martin, Peter (1995). Edmond Malone, Shakespearean Scholar: A Literary Biography. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-61982-0.
• Martin, Peter (1999). A Life of James Boswell. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-81809-0.
• Martin, Peter (2001). A Dog Called Perth: The True Story of a Beagle. Orion Books. ISBN 978-1-55970-652-0.
• Martin, Peter, ed. (2003). The Essential Boswell: Selections from the Writings of James Boswell. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-60718-2.
• Martin, Peter (2008). Samuel Johnson: A Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-60719-9.
• Martin, Peter (2009). Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-03585-0.

References

Further reading

• Craig, Robert M. (1992). "Review of The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson". Eighteenth-Century Studies. 26 (1): 176–9. doi:10.2307/2739262. ISSN 0013-2586.
• Wilson, David Scofield (1993). "Review of The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson". The William and Mary Quarterly. 50 (1): 209–211. doi:10.2307/2947253. ISSN 0043-5597.
• Linden-Ward, Blanche (1992). "Review of The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson". Journal of the Early Republic. 12 (1): 102–104. doi:10.2307/3123984. ISSN 0275-1275.
• Quitt, Martin H. (1993). "Review of The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson". The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 101 (1): 160–2. doi:10.2307/4249335. ISSN 0042-6636.
• O'Malley, Therese (1992). "Appropriation and Adaptation: Early Gardening Literature in America". Huntington Library Quarterly. 55 (3): 401–31. doi:10.2307/3817685. ISSN 0018-7895.
• Scanlan, J. T. (1998). "Review of Edmond Malone, Shakespearean Scholar: A Literary Biography". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 97 (3): 444–7. doi:10.2307/27711715. ISSN 0363-6941.
• Taylor, Christopher (9 August 2008). "Blame it on Boswell". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 August 2010.
• Hensher, Philip (2 August 2008). "Not tired of this life". The Spectator. Retrieved 4 August 2010.
• Fergusson, James (17 August 2008). "Samuel Johnson: A Biography by Peter Martin". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 4 August 2010.
• Price, Leah (30 January 2009). "Lives of Johnson". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 August 2010.
• Robshaw, Brandon (20 December 2009). "Samuel Johnson: A Biography, By Peter Martin". The Independent. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
• Kirsch, Adam (23 February 2009). "Money Made Him Do It: What Samuel Johnson can teach us about writing". Slate. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
• Johnston, George Sim (18 September 2008). "A Melancholy Man of Letters". The Wall Street Journal. p. A23. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
• Cook, Daniel (2010). "Dr Johnson's Heart". The Cambridge Quarterly. 39 (2): 186–95. doi:10.1093/camqtly/bfq006.
• Rawson, Claude (7 January 2001). "Boswell's Boswell". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 August 2010. Martin's is not the first biography to make use of the Yale archive. Boswell's earlier and later careers were written up by Frederick A. Pottle and Frank Brady, in two densely documented, though readable, works of record. This new life of James Boswell makes available to nonscholarly readers a vivid and sensitively observed narrative that takes account of the full range of new information.
• Shinagel, Michael (2001). "Review of A Life of James Boswell". Harvard Review. 20: 161–3. doi:10.2307/27568530.
• Korshin, Paul J. (2003). "Review of A Life of James Boswell". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 102 (3): 438–42. doi:10.2307/27712365.
• Baruth, Philip (2002). "Something Old, Something New: Two Recent (and Contradictory) Portraits of James Boswell". Eighteenth-Century Studies. 35 (2): 279–84. doi:10.1353/ecs.2002.0002. ISSN 1086-315X.
• Hitchings, Henry (6 September 1999). "A-whoring we go". New Statesman. Retrieved 5 August 2010. In conveying a picture of this constant wavering, Martin's treatment of his material is dextrous and assured, and he offers a refreshingly ambiguous portrait of his subject.
• Holmes, Richard (20 September 2001). "Triumph of an Artist". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 5 August 2010.