Park Honan

Who is Park Honan?

Park Honan, academic and author, was born on 17 September 1928 in Utica, New York, USA, the son of William Francis Honan, a thoracic surgeon and Annette Neudecker Honan, a journalist. He is a brother of the journalist William Holmes Honan of the New York Times.

After graduating from Deep Springs College, California, Honan went on to receive an MA from the University of Chicago in 1951. He moved to England in 1956 and studied at the University of London, gaining the degree of PhD with a thesis on Robert Browning in 1959.

Honan was appointed Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Leeds in 1984 and retired in 1993 with the title Emeritus Professor.

Honan has produced several academic biographies of diverse writers, ranging from the Elizabethan period to the 19th century. In addition to extensive work on Browning, he has written biographies of Jane Austen, Matthew Arnold, William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. He has also edited an anthology of Beat Generation writers.

In 1998 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature