COLLINS, Philip (Arthur William) 1923-

PERSONAL: Born May 28, 1923, in London, England; son of Arthur Henry and Winifred Nellie (Bowmaker) Collins; married Mildred Lowe, November 1, 1952 (divorced, 1963); married Joyce Dickins, August 18, 1965; children: Simon, Rosamund, Marcus. Education: Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, M.A., 1947. Hobbies and other interests: Amateur theatre actor and producer, especially Shakespeare; music.

ADDRESSES: Home—26 Knighton Dr., Leicester LE2 3HB, England. Office—University of Leicester, University Rd., Leicester LE1 7RH, England.

CAREER: Vaughan College, Leicester, England, staff tutor in adult education, 1947-54, warden, 1954-62; University of Leicester, Leicester, England, senior lecturer in English, 1962-64, professor of English literature, 1964-82, chair of Victorian Studies Centre, 1966, head of English department, 1971-76, 1981-82; emeritus professor of English, 1982—. Visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley, 1967, Columbia University, 1969, and Victoria University (New Zealand), 1974; Byron lecturer, University of Nottingham, England, 1969; lecturer, Tennyson Society, Lincoln, England, 1972; Annie Tolbot Cole lecturer, Bowdoin University, 1973. Public orator, 1975-78, 1980-82; has given several international lecture tours, performances, scripts and talks for radio and television; member of drama panel of Arts Council of Great Britain, 1970-75, and board of directors of National Theatre, 1976-82; secretary to board of directors, Leicester Theatre Trust Ltd., 1963-87; research consultant to British Broadcasting Corp. television. Military service: British Army, 1942-45; served in Royal Army Ordinance Corps and Royal Norfolk Regiment; became lieutenant.

MEMBER: Drama Panel, Arts Council of Great Britain (1970-75), British American Drama Academy board (1983-97); Tennyson Society (chair, 1984-97), Dickens Fellowship (vice president, 1969; president, 1983-85), Dickens Society (president, 1975), Dickens House Museum (chair, board of trustees, 1984-92), Victorian Society (executive committee), Leicester Film Society, Leicester Poetry Society.

WRITINGS:

James Boswell, Longmans, Green (London, England), 1956.

(Editor) English Christmas: An Anthology, Gordon Fraser Gallery (Bedford, England), 1956.

Dickens's Periodicals, [Leicester, England], 1957. (Editor, with others) Letters of Charles Dickens, Volume 1, Pilgrim Edition, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1960-63.

Dickens and Crime, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1962, 3rd edition, 1994.

Dickens and Adult Education, University of Leicester, Department of Adult Education (Leicester, England), 1962.

Dickens and Education, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1963, 2nd edition, 1964.

The Impress of the Moving Age (inaugural lecture), Leicester University Press (Leicester, England), 1965.

Thomas Cooper, the Chartist: Byron and the "Poets of the Poor," University of Nottingham Press (Nottingham, England), 1970.

(Compiler) A Dickens Bibliography, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1970.

(Editor) Dickens: The Critical Heritage, Barnes & Noble (New York, NY), 1971.

(Editor) A Christmas Carol: The Public Reading Version, 1971.

A Critical Commentary on Dickens's "Bleak House," Macmillan (London, England), 1971.

Reading Aloud: A Victorian Metier, Tennyson Society (Lincoln, England), 1972.

(Editor) The Public Readings of Charles Dickens, Clarendon Press (Oxford, England), 1975.

From Manly Tear to Stiff Upper Lip: The Victorians and Pathos, Victoria University Press (Wellington, England), 1975.

Charles Dickens: David Copperfield, (critical studies), Edward Arnold (London, England), 1977, Dynamic Learning Corp., 1977.

(Contributor) George H. Ford, editor, Victorian Fiction: A Second Guide to Research, Modern Language Association (New York, NY), 1978.

(Editor) Charles Dickens: Hard Times, 1978.

(Editor) Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, two volumes, Barnes & Noble (Totowa, NJ), 1981.

(Editor) Thackeray: Interviews and Recollections, two volumes, Barnes & Noble (New York, NY), 1982.

(Editor) Trollope's London, 1983.

(Editor and author of introduction and notes) Sikes and Nancy and Other Public Readings, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1983.

Tennyson, Poet of Lincolnshire, Tennyson Society (Lincoln, England), 1985.

(Editor, with Edward Giuliano) The Annotated Dickens, two volumes, C. N. Potter (New York, NY), 1986.

Dickens and Other Victorians: Essays in Honor of Philip Collins, edited by Joanne Shattock, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1988.

(Editor) Tennyson: Seven Essays, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Also coauthor of The Canker and the Rose, performed in London, at Mermaid Theatre, 1964; author of talks and scripts for radio and television; contributor to Encyclopaedia Britannica; contributor to journals and periodicals, including Dickensian, Essays and Studies, Listener, Notes and Queries, Review of English Studies, and Times Literary Supplement. Member of editorial board of Dickens Studies Annual and Victorian Studies.

SIDELIGHTS: English scholar, educator, and dramatic performer Philip Collins's numerous books on the nineteenth-century English novelist Charles Dickens have "turned [Collins] into something of a one-man Dickens industry," noted Peter Davalle in the London Times. Regarding Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, a two-volume set of reminiscences by Dickens's contemporaries, an Economist reviewer commented, "No better editor than Professor Collins could be found for this compendium: his expertise on Victorian literature and society, on all levels, is unchallengeable. The major testimonies are here, with enlightening and scholarly annotations." Davalle urged readers to "dip into Professor Collins's . . . volumes where you will find some fascinating or half-forgotten tidbit about Dickens [which] beckons to be savoured."

Collins once told CA: "I feel almost ashamed to have 'gone on so' about Dickens: but when I started working on him thirty years ago, little scholarly work on him existed, and much still remains to be done. Thus we still lack an adequate study of his politics. Lately, however, I have been diversifying into Tennyson, Thackeray, Trollope and Hardy."

Collins edited Thackeray: Interviews and Recollections and Trollope's London in 1983. He also edited the 1992 volume Tennyson: Seven Essays, which honors the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, on the centennial of his death and acknowledges a renewal of interest in the poet, reaching a peak between 1988 and 1990. The book contains essays on Tennyson's relationships with other writers, such as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Arthur Hallam, Edward Fitzgerald, and the Cambridge Apostles. Other essays focus on Tennyson and balladic and lyric traditions and on the theme of loss in two of Tennyson's works, "The Lover's Tale" and "In Memoriam." Still another examines ideological influences on "In Memoriam" and "Maud." The essays are written by John Beer, Eric Griffiths, Norman Page, W. W. Robson, Jerome H. Buckley, Aidan Day, and Isobel Armstrong. Rhoda L. Flaxman of Victorian Studies enjoyed the volume, saying that Collins "presents us with a straightforward gathering of revised or expanded lectures to the Tennyson Society, published as a single volume toward the general goal of demonstrating 'Tennyson's present value,' using no single critical approach. Most of his essayists contribute mainstream approaches to Tennyson's biography and oeuvre."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Books & Bookmen, July, 1982, review of Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, p. 24.

British Book News, April, 1982, review of Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, p. 256; September, 1983, review of Thackeray: Interviews and Recollections, p. 577; December, 1984, review of Charles Dickens: David Copperfield, p. 714.

Choice, February, 1982, review of Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, p. 764; June, 1983, review of Thackeray: Interviews and Recollections, p. 1460.

Economist, January 23, 1971; January 16, 1982, review of Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, p. 83.

Guardian Weekly, February 14, 1982, review of Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, p. 21.

Modern Language Review, October, 1979.

Modern Philology, May, 1985, review of Thackeray: Interviews and Recollections, p. 434.

Nineteenth-Century Literature, June, 1993, review of Tennyson: Seven Essays, p. 135; December, 1995, review of Dickens and Crime, 3rd edition, p. 415.

Observer (London, England), January 10, 1982, review of Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, p. 45.

Times (London, England), Peter Davalle, January 28, 1982.

Times Educational Supplement, March 19, 1982, review of Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, p. 26.

Times Literary Supplement, March 5, 1971; August 8, 1983; October 7, 1992, review of Tennyson: Seven Essays, p. 7.

Victorian Studies, summer, 1983, review of Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, p. 469; winter, 1994, Rhoda L. Flaxman, review of Tennyson: Seven Essays, p. 358.