Christopher Bigsby

Christopher William Edgar Bigsby FRSA FRSL, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, (born 27 June 1941) is a British literary analyst and novelist, with more than fifty books to his credit. Earlier in his writing career, his books were published under the name C. W. E. Bigsby. He has won awards for his work on the American theatre, for his biography of Arthur Miller, for his first novel, Hester, and for his work in study abroad. Bigsby was educated at Sutton County Grammar School and thence at the University of Sheffield, for his BA (1959-1962) and MA(1962-4), before moving to the University of Nottingham for his PhD (1964-6). His first appointment, as a lecturer in American Literature, was at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. In 1969 he moved to the then new University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich rising to Professor of American Studies in 1985, a post he held until retiring in 2018, thence becoming emeritus professor. He travelled widely for the British Council and chaired their Cambridge Seminar for eighteen years, an event which brought writers and academics from around the world to meet with British writers. He has been a contributor to BBC Radio, presenting a number of programmes and series of programmes over the years. Besides his many academic books he collaborated with his friend and colleague Malcolm Bradbury on two television plays and an 8-part situation comedy, Patterson. They were also joint editors of the multi-volume Contemporary Writers series for Methuen. Bigsby is considered one of the world's best analysts of American theatre, and in particular has published widely on the playright Arthur Miller. His books on Miller include, Arthur Miller & Company (1990), The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller (1997), Arthur Miller: A Critical Study (2005), and Remembering Arthur Miller (2005). In November 2008, Bigsby published the first volume of his biography of Miller, based on boxes of papers Miller made avai