Claire Harman | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Writer and biographer |
| Period | 1989–present |
| Subject | Literary biography, short fiction, poetry |
| Notable works | Fanny Burney; Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World; Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything |
| Notable awards | John Lllewyn Rhys Prize; Forward Prize; Tom Gallon Award |
| Website | |
| www | |
Claire Harman is a British literary critic and book reviewer who has written for the Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, Evening Standard, the Sunday Telegraph and other publications.[1] Harman is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has taught English at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester. She has taught creative writing at Columbia University,[2] and been Professor of Creative Writing at Durham University since 2016.[3]
Harman won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1989 for her biography of poet Sylvia Townsend Warner.[4] This was followed with eponymous biographies of Fanny Burney[5] in 2000 and Robert Louis Stevenson in 2005.[6] In 2009, Harman published Jane's Fame, a book about the posthumous fame of novelist Jane Austen.
In 2015, Harman published what the Guardian called an 'eminently sensible'[7] biography of Charlotte Bronte.[8] In the same year, she won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem of the year for "The Mighty Hudson", first published in the Times Literary Supplement.[9] In 2016, Harman won the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award for a short story.[10] This was followed by Murder by the Book; A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime[11] in 2018.
Harman returned to literary biography with the 'innovative' [12]All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything[13] in 2023.
Harman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2006. She is a judge of the J.R. Ackerley Prize.