Stoddard Martin

Stoddard Martin is a writer, lecturer and publisher. He was born in Philadelphia, grew up in California in the 1960s and has lived in London principally since the early '70s. He has been a social worker, a wood merchant, an itinerant salesman, a teacher aboard U.S. warships, the arts and managing editor of Avantgarde magazine (1981-4) and of Status UK magazine (1986-7), for both of which he wrote articles under various names. His reviews and articles have also appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Observer, The San Diego Union, Poetry, The Jewish Quarterly, The Jewish Chronicle and Quarterly Review, for which he writes regularly and is on the editorial board.

He went to The Haverford School as a boy, La Jolla Country Day School as a young teen and The Webb School of California later, where he was student body president, graduating in 1966. He received a B.A. in History, with a modern European emphasis, from Stanford University in 1970; a B.A. and M.A. in English from California State University, San Francisco in 1974; a Ph.D in literature from University College, London, in 1978, where his thesis was entitled 'Wagner to the Waste Land'. This in revised form became his first academic book, published by The Macmillan Press in 1982. California Writers followed in 1984; Art, Messianism and Crime in 1986; Orthodox Heresy in 1989; and The Great Expatriate Writers in 1992. All were simultaneously published by St Martin's Press in the U.S.

Apart from lecturing on U.S. warships, his academic career has included being a preceptor in expository writing at Harvard University (1987-9), a lecturer in English literature sponsored by the British Council at the University of Lodz in Poland (1990-1), a professorship at the University of Warsaw under similar sponsorship (1991-2), a tutorship in the Department for Continuing Education of Oxford University (1993-8) and a visiting professorship in English and later America literature at University of Warsaw (1997-2004). He has been a visiting fellow at the Institute of English Studies, University of London (2007-8), and retains an associate fellowship there. He has given papers at conferences in France, Ireland and Germany as well as the U.K., some of which have been anthologized.

His principal passion and objective as a writer has been to create an interlinked sequence of novellas, comprising a portrait of his time & place and its types. His Californian cycle includes an early trilogy 'A Revolution of the Sun' and five novellas published under the title The End of the Road. His trilogy A School of London, his Polish novella Liberation in the East, his two novellas on the theme of anti-Semitism, and his Riviera and Venetian excursions South and Proie all reflect his long experience as an American expatriate in England and Europe. These books are published under the name Chip Martin by Starhaven, a small press he set up in conjunction with the poet Martha Stevens in La Jolla, California in 1978, which continues now principally from London. For a list of the distinguished other authors Starhaven has published, please consult its website www.starhaven.org.uk.

Beyond Stoddard Martin's performances as academic, Chip Martin has over the years given numerous public readings in various cities and has participated in literary festivals, notably those of Shakespeare and Company in Paris. He has served on the management committee of English PEN and of the Hampstead Authors' Society. Reviews of his work have appeared in many newspapers and journals. Anthologies edited by him have been published by Duckworth, on Byron (1990), Nietzsche (1994) and D. H. Lawrence (1995) in the 'Sayings of' series, which he helped to devise, also on the firm's late managing director in Colin Haycraft: Maverick Publisher (1995). With Peter Conradi he edited a book of essays on 60 years of British Council lectureships in Poland entitled Cold War, Common Pursuit (1999, Starhaven).

www.stoddardmartin.com