ANDREW MARVELL'S SENSE OF HUMOUR

The English Department and Andrew Marvell Centre at the University of Hull are pleased to announce a jointly organised lecture in the English research seminar series:

Monday 24 January, 4.30 pm, Graduate School Seminar Room

NIGEL SMITH, William and Anne S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature at Princeton University, US:

'ANDREW MARVELL'S SENSE OF HUMOUR: WIT, EVIL AND WHY WE SHOULD READ HIM'

Nigel Smith graduated from Hull in 1980 with a degree in English and History. He then spent nearly twenty years in Oxford and the last eleven in Princeton. He recently published a biography of Andrew Marvell, the 17th-century poet and campaigner for toleration, who was one of Hull's M.P.s between 1659 and 1678. He was also a spy, clandestine pamphleteer, satirist and had a decidedly unusual private life, about which he was particularly secretive. After William Wilberforce, he may be the city's most famous native, or perhaps he is its most famous historical figure.
Smith's biography of Marvell was published in the UK in October by Yale University Press, was Book of the Week in The Guardian, and has been extremely well-received in The Independent and the London Review of Books. Smith has been
interviewed on BBC Radio 3's Nightwaves and on BBC Radio Humberside.

Everybody welcome

For further details contact Ann Heilmann (a.heilmann@hull.ac.uk) or Janet Clare (j.clare@hull.ac.uk)