Pleasing Myself

Sir John Frank Kermode was a British literary critic best known for his work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (1967) and for his extensive book-reviewing and editing.

Kermode was born on the Isle of Man in November 1919, and was educated at Douglas High School and Liverpool University. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II for six years in total, much of it spent in Iceland.

In 1947, Kermode began his academic career as a lecturer at Durham University; he later taught at Reading University, followed by a stint at the University of Bristol. In 1967 he was named Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London, a position he held until 1974, when he took the position of King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University - he resigned from this post in 1982. He then moved to Columbia University in the New York City, where he was Julian Clarence Levi Professor Emeritus in the Humanities. From 1975-76 he held the Norton Lectureship at Harvard University. He was knighted in 1991.

Kermode died in Cambridge on 17 August 2010.