Steiner, George, 1929-2020
by Professor Edward J. Hughes FBA and Professor Ben Hutchinson
- Date
- 13 Dec 2022
- Number of pages
- 20 (pages 433-452)
George Steiner was the very archetype of the European intellectual. Born in Paris in 1929 to Austrian parents, he fled with his Jewish family to New York in 1940, barely escaping the Shoah. He went on to become a deeply influential literary and cultural critic, holding the Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva as well as numerous Visiting Professorships across the world. Among his many landmark studies are After Babel (1975), Grammars of Creation (2001), and The Poetry of Thought (2011) – all of which convey Steiner’s conviction that the humanities express the best, but are incapable of hindering the worst, of humanity.
Posted to Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, 20