Professor Robert Hampson FEA, FRSA was Professor of Modern Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, from 2000 to 2016. He was educated at King's College, London, and the University of Toronto. He gained his BA and PhD from King's College, London, and his MA from Toronto (which he attended as the result of the award of a Commonwealth Scholarship). He taught at Royal Holloway from 1973, when he was awarded a three-year Tutorial Research Studentship, and was Head of Department for 1994, 1996-97 and 2002-2009. He was Director of the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway during 2016-17 and retired in 2019. He is currently Emeritus Professor at Royal Holloway; Research Fellow at the Institute for English Studies, University of London; and Visiting Professor at the University of Northumbria.

Joseph Conrad and his contemporaries

Professor Hampson has an international reputation as a Conrad scholar and critic. His books on Conrad include Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity (Macmillan, 1992), Cross-Cultural Encounters in Joseph Conrad's Malay Fiction (Palgrave, 2000) and Conrad's Secrets (Palgrave, 2013). Cross-Cultural Encounters was described in The Year's Work in English Studies (2002) as 'the outstanding contribution to Conrad scholarship this year', while Conrad's Secrets was described, in The Year's Work in English Studies (2013), as 'arguably the most striking and inventive contribution to Conrad scholarship in 2012' and, by the Times Literary Supplement, as 'an indispensable resource for specialists and enthusiasts alike'.

His most recent work is the critical biography, Joseph Conrad, for Reaktion Books' Critical Lives series. Maya Jasanoff describes it as 'insightful, judicious and elegant': 'Joseph Conrad marvellously distils a lifetime of learning by one of the world's leading Conrad scholars. This is the best short guide to Conrad's life available'.

He has also edited various works by Conrad ('Heart of Darkness', Lord Jim and Victory) and was the editor of The Conradian (1989-96) and co-editor (2021-22). He has recently co-edited Conrad and Language (Edinburgh, 2016) with Katherine Baxter; he has also co-edited two collections of essays on Ford Madox Ford - Ford Madox Ford: A Re Assessment (Rodopi, 2002) and Ford Madox Ford and Modernity (Rodopi, 2003) - and works by Kipling and Rider Haggard.

In January 2015, he was elected Chair of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK). Conrad's Secrets was the recipient of the Adam Gillon Award from the Joseph Conrad Society of America (2015) for best book on Conrad. In 2017 the Joseph Conrad Society of America awarded him the Ian P. Watt Prize for Excellence in Conrad Scholarship for his lifetime's work on Conrad.

Contemporary poetry

In addition to his work on Conrad, he has had a long-term involvement with contemporary innovative poetry as editor, critic and practitioner. He co-edited the magazine Alembic (with Peter Barry and Ken Edwards) during the 1970s, and he and Peter Barry co-edited the pioneering collection of essays, The New British poetries: The scope of the possible (Manchester University Press, 1993). He co-edited Frank O'Hara Now (Liverpool University Press, 2010) with Will Montgomery, Clasp: late modernist poetry in London in the 1970s (Shearsman, 2016) with Ken Edwards, and The Allen Fisher Companion (Shearsman, 2020) with cris cheek..

His own most recent poetry publications include Assembled Fugitives: Selected Poems 1973-1998 (Stride, 2000), Seaport (Shearsman, 2008), an explanation of colours (Veer, 2010), and sonnets 4 sophie (pushtika, 2015). Reworked Disasters (Knivesforksand spoons, 2013) was long-listed for the Forward Prize. He collaborated (with Robert Sheppard) on Liverpool (hugs &) kisses (2015) and the translations of the poetry of Mirele Nemoianu for Twitters for a Lark: Poetry of the European Union of Imaginary Authors (Shearsman: 2017).