Mark Ford

Mark Ford is a Professor of English Literature at University College London (UCL), specializing in 19th-21st century British, American, and French literature. His research focuses on the New York School of poets, French writers like Raymond Roussel and Jules Laforgue, and Thomas Hardy's works. He has published extensively in these areas.

• Education: BA (1983) and DPhil (1992) from the University of Oxford; Kennedy Scholar at Harvard (1983-84); Visiting Lecturer at Kyoto University (1991-93)

His research spans three core UCL Department of English Language and Literature fields: City (e.g., London's literary history), Editions (critical editions of Hardy, Laforgue, Roussel), and Life Stories (biography, elegiac poetry, and literary executorship for Mick Imlah). Publications include monographs on Hardy, translations of French works, and curated anthologies.

Mark Ford has contributed to over 70 publications, including four poetry collections (Landlocked, Soft Sift, Six Children, Enter, Fleeing) and critical essays featured in This Dialogue of One (2014) and A Guest Among Stars (2024). His recent work explores elegiac poetry traditions across Tennyson, Hardy, and contemporary contexts.

• Scientific Awards:
  • 2015 Pegasus Prize for Criticism

He supervises PhD students on modernist and contemporary poets (Pound, Eliot, Ashbery, Bishop) and co-hosts the LRB Close Readings podcast series, analyzing works from Ben Jonson to Alice Oswald.