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Matthew Sturgis

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Matthew Sturgis, Hatchards, London, November 2018

Matthew Sturgis (born 1960)[1] is a British historian and biographer.

Early life

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Sturgis earned a degree in history at the University of Oxford.[2]

Career

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Sturgis has written art criticism for Harpers & Queens, travel journalism for The Sunday Telegraph, book reviews for The Independent, and cartoons for the Oldie and the Daily Mail.[2]

The Independent called his 1998 Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography "impressively researched".[3]

Reviewing Walter Sickert: A Life, Sickert scholar Richard Shone concluded, "At last Sickert has the biography he deserves".[4] Another reviewer found Sturgis "marvelous in capturing the sparkling eccentricities of his subject along with the changing fads and fashions to which Sickert was throughout his long life so sensitive".[5]

Reviewing Oscar: A Life in The Guardian, Anthony Quinn wrote "he is a tremendous orchestrator of material, fastidious, unhurried, indefatigable."[6] The Evening Standard, called it "sympathetic and insightful", and "much better" than the last major biography of Wilde, by Richard Ellman thirty years earlier.[7]

Personal life

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He is married to the art dealer and gallerist Rebecca Hossack, and they live in a Georgian house in Fitzrovia, London.[8]

Publications

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  • 1992 and All This, Macmillan, 1991
  • Passionate Attitudes: The English Decadence of the 1890s, Macmillan, 1995[2]
  • Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography, 1998[3]
  • 1900 House: Featuring Extracts from the Personal Diaries of Joyce and Paul Bowler and Their Family with Mark McCrum, Macmillan, London, 1999. ISBN 978-0-7522-1711-6
  • Walter Sickert: A Life, 2005[2]
  • Oscar: A Life, Head of Zeus, 2018. Published in the U.S. as Oscar Wilde: A Life, Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.

References

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  1. ^ Encyclopedia.com
  2. ^ a b c d "Matthew Sturgis". HarperCollins Publishers: World-Leading Book Publisher. Retrieved 5 December 2018.
  3. ^ a b "Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography, By Matthew Sturgis". The Independent. 27 January 2012. Archived from the original on 12 May 2022. Retrieved 5 December 2018.
  4. ^ Shone, Richard, "The painter properly portrayed", The Spectator, 12 February 2005
  5. ^ Fox, Paul, untitled review in South Atlantic Review, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Fall 2005), pp. 152-155
  6. ^ Quinn, Anthony (1 October 2018). "Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis – review". Retrieved 5 December 2018 – via www.theguardian.com.
  7. ^ "Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis – review". Evening Standard. 11 October 2018. Retrieved 5 December 2018.
  8. ^ "The London Magazine". www.thelondonmagazine.co.uk. Retrieved 5 December 2018.