DIX, Robin C. 1956-

PERSONAL:

Born 1956.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 440 Forsgate Dr., Cranbury, NJ 08512. E-mail—R.C.Dix@durham.ac.uk.

CAREER:

Educator and editor. University of Durham, England, lecturer.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (Madison, NJ), 1996.

(Editor) Mark Akenside: A Reassessment, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (Madison, NJ), 2000.

Author of articles for various academic publications.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

A critical study of Mark Akenside; a book on eighteenth-century philosophical poetry.

SIDELIGHTS:

Robin C. Dix has edited two volumes devoted to the poetic works of Mark Akenside, an eighteenth-century English poet who enjoyed prominence with such publications as Odes on Several Subjects and The Pleasures of Imagination. "In his own century, Akenside's reputation was very high. Few went so far as John Gilbert Cooper to compare him with Shakespeare, or so far as Erasmus Darwin to prefer him to Milton," informed Peter New in the Review of English Studies. New noted that Akenside fostered the development of blank verse during the literary period bridging John Milton and the Romantics, earning the poet "an important place in the history of English poetry." New called Dix's first collection on Akenside, The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside, a "major edition." Critic Brean S. Hammond wrote in Modern Language Review that "Dix's textual editing … is done to a very exacting standard," while Times Literary Supplement contributor Steve Clark praised The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside as a "splendid new edition."

In Mark Akenside: A Reassessment, Dix provides a volume of critical essays by various scholars on different aspects of Akenside's poetry and his contribution to eighteenth-century literature. Neil Powell, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, commented extensively on one of Akenside's most important poems, "The Pleasures of Imagination," and then noted: "This handsome … and persuasive book of essays should certainly help to nudge it back towards the centre of eighteenth-century English poetry, where it belongs."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Modern Language Review, July, 1998, Brean S. Hammond, review of The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside, pp. 796-797.

Review of English Studies, February, 1998, Peter New, review of The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside, p. 90.

Times Literary Supplement, December 27, 1996, Steve Clark, "In Praise of the 'Intenser Act,'" p. 13; June 22, 2001, Neil Powell, "Weaving the Rainbow," pp. 3-4.

ONLINE

University of Durham Web site,http://www.dur.ac.uk/ (October 13, 2004), "Dr. Robin Dix."*