Claire Harman (writer)

Claire Harman is a British literary critic and book reviewer who has written for the Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, Evening Standard, the Sunday Telegraph and other publications.^[1] Harman is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has taught English at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester. She has taught creative writing at Columbia University,^[2] and been Professor of Creative Writing at Durham University since 2016.^[3]

Claire Harman FRSL
Occupation	Writer and biographer
Period	1989–present
Subject	Literary biography, short fiction, poetry
Notable works	Fanny Burney; Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World; Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything
Notable awards	John Lllewyn Rhys Prize; Forward Prize; Tom Gallon Award
Website
www.claireharman.com

Harman won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1989 for her biography of poet Sylvia Townsend Warner.^[4] This was followed with eponymous biographies of Fanny Burney^[5] in 2000 and Robert Louis Stevenson in 2005.^[6] In 2009, Harman published Jane's Fame, a book about the posthumous fame of novelist Jane Austen.

In 2015, Harman published what the Guardian called an 'eminently sensible'^[7] biography of Charlotte Bronte.^[8] In the same year, she won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem of the year for "The Mighty Hudson", first published in the Times Literary Supplement.^[9] In 2016, Harman won the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award for a short story.^[10] This was followed by Murder by the Book; A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime^[11] in 2018.

Harman returned to literary biography with the 'innovative' ^[12]All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything^[13] in 2023.

Harman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2006.^[14] She is a judge of the J.R. Ackerley Prize.

Bibliography

Biographies

• 1989 — Sylvia Townsend Warner, Chatto & Windus/Minerva
• 2000 — Fanny Burney: A biography . HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0-00-739189-9.
• 2005 — Robert Louis Stevenson, HarperCollins
• 2015 — Charlotte Brontë: A Life, Viking Penguin
• 2016 — Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• 2022 — All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything, Chatto & Windus

Criticism

• 2009 — Jane's Fame Canongate

Other non-fiction

• 2019 — Murder by the Book: The Crime That Shocked Dickens's London, Knopf