Perry Anderson | |
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 Anderson in 2012 | |
| Born | Francis Rory Peregrine Anderson 11 September 1938 (1938-09-11) (age 87) London, England |
| Occupations | Historian and political essayist |
| Spouse | |
| Relatives | Benedict Anderson (brother) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Worcester College, Oxford |
| Academic work | |
| School or tradition | New Left |
Francis Rory Peregrine "Perry"Anderson (born 11 September 1938) is a British intellectual, political philosopher, historian and essayist. His work ranges acrosshistorical sociology,intellectual history, andcultural analysis. Anderson's early work was more theoretical, concerned with working out problems inhistorical materialism. His mature work is marked by a concern with biographies and national histories.[1]
Anderson is perhaps best known as the moving force behind theNew Left Review. He is Professor of History and Sociology at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Anderson has written many books, most recentlyDifferent Speeds, Same Furies: Powell, Proust and other Literary Forms andDisputing Disaster: A Sextet on the Great War. He is the brother of political scientistBenedict Anderson (1936–2015).
Anderson was born in London on 11 September 1938.[2] His father, James Carew O'Gorman Anderson (1893–1946), known as Séamas, an official with theChinese Maritime Customs, was born into anAnglo-Irish family, the younger son of Brigadier-General Sir Francis Anderson, ofBallydavid,County Waterford.[3] He was descended from theAnderson family of Ardbrake,Bothriphnie, Scotland, who had settled in Ireland in the early 18th century.[4][5][6]
Anderson's mother, Veronica Beatrice Mary Bigham, was English,[7] the daughter ofTrevor Bigham, who was theDeputy Commissioner of the LondonMetropolitan Police, 1914–1931. Anderson's grandmother, Frances, Lady Anderson, belonged to theGaelicGormanclan ofCounty Clare and was the daughter of theIrish Home Rule Member of Parliament MajorPurcell O'Gorman,[8][9][10] himself the son of Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman who had been involved with theRepublicanSociety of United Irishmen during the1798 Rebellion, later becoming Secretary of theCatholic Association in the 1820s.[8][11][12] Anderson's father had previously been married to the novelistStella Benson, and it was after her death in 1933 that he married again.[4]
Anderson was educated atEton andWorcester College, Oxford, where he took his first degree.[13] Early in his life, Anderson made a brief foray intorock criticism, writing under the pseudonym Richard Merton.[14]
In 1962 Anderson became editor of theNew Left Review, a position he held for twenty years.[15] As scholars of theNew Left began to reassess theircanon in the mid-1970s, Anderson provided an influential perspective.[15] He published two major volumes of analytical history in 1974:Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism focuses on the creation and endurance offeudal social formations, whileLineages of the Absolutist State examinesmonarchical absolutism. Within their respective topics they are each vast in scope, assessing the whole history of Europe from classical times to the nineteenth century. The books achieved an instant prominence for Anderson, whose wide-ranging analysissynthesised elements of history, philosophy, andpolitical theory.[15]
In the 1980s, Anderson took office as a professor at theNew School for Social Research inNew York.[15] He returned as editor atNLR in 2000 for three more years, and after his retirement continued to serve on the journal's editorial committee. As of 2019, he has continued to make contributions to theLondon Review of Books,[16] and pursued teaching as a Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles.[17]
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Anderson bore the brunt of the disapproval ofE. P. Thompson in the latter'sThe Poverty of Theory, in a controversy during the late 1970s over thestructuralist Marxism ofLouis Althusser, and the use of history and theory in the politics of the Left. In the mid-1960s, Thompson wrote an essay for the annualSocialist Register that rejected Anderson's view ofaristocratic dominance of Britain's historical trajectory, as well as Anderson's seeming preference for continental European theorists over radical British traditions andempiricism. Anderson delivered two responses to Thompson'spolemics, first in an essay inNew Left Review (January–February 1966) called "Socialism and Pseudo-Empiricism",[18] and then in a more conciliatory yet ambitious overview,Arguments within English Marxism (1980).
While Anderson faced many attacks in his native Britain for favouring continental European philosophers over British thinkers, he did not spareWestern European Marxists from criticism, such as in hisConsiderations on Western Marxism (1976). Nevertheless, many of his assaults were delivered againstpostmodernist currents in continental Europe. In his bookIn the Tracks of Historical Materialism, Anderson depicts Paris as the new capital of intellectual reaction.
Prudence was displayed in the use of a pseudonym for two Andersonian forays onto the terrain of rock music, under the signature of Richard Merton, who opted for the Stones rather than the Beatles, and the Beach Boys rather than Bob Dylan.
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