Crossley, Robert
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author, Critic, Editor.
(1945- ) Critic and editor, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Primarily known for his studies on Olaf Stapledon, including the biography Olaf Stapledon: Speaking for the Future (1994), and the edited collection of letters traded between Stapledon and his wife Agnes Zena Miller titled Talking Across the World: The Love Letters of Olaf Stapledon and Agnes Miller, 1913-1919 (1987). Crossley visited Miller and received much assistance from the Stapledon family while conducting research for these texts. Crossley has also written on Stapledon's predecessor H G Wells, including a Starmont Guide on H.G. Wells (1986) and an essay in David Seed's A Companion to Science Fiction (anth 2005) titled "The Grandeur of H.G. Wells". In his article "The Correspondence of Olaf Stapledon and H.G. Wells, 1931-1942", collected in Gary K Wolfe's edited collection of essays Science Fiction Dialogues (anth 1982), Crossley has also commented on the nature of the interchange between these two correspondents. Most recently Crossley has charted the relationships between the literary imagination and scientific knowledge in the development and representation of Mars in Imagining Mars: A Literary History (2011) and has edited an edition of the then out of print Kindred (2004) by Octavia E Butler, which publication has since become one of Beacon Press's best selling titles and has played a role in the renaissance of Butler's career. [CPa]
Robert Crossley
born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 1945
works
nonfiction
- H.G. Wells (Mercer Island, Washington: Starmont House, 1986) [nonfiction: Starmont Reader's Guide: pb/]
- Olaf Stapledon: Speaking for the Future (Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 1994) [nonfiction: hb/pictorial]
- Imagining Mars: A Literary History (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2011) [nonfiction: hb/Robert A Hardy]
works as editor
- Olaf Stapledon. Talking Across the World: The Love Letters of Olaf Stapledon and Agnes Miller, 1913-1919 (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1987) [nonfiction: coll: hb/photographic]
- Olaf Stapledon. An Olaf Stapledon Reader (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1997) [coll: hb/Frederick A Wellner]
- Octavia Butler. Kindred (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1988) [revised 2004: Black Women Writers: pb/photographic]
links
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