N. John Hall

[[File:NJohnHall.jpg|thumb|N. John Hall at his home]] '''N. John Hall''' (born 1933) is an American [[biographer]] and scholar best known for his books on [[Anthony Trollope]] and [[Max Beerbohm]]. In addition, Hall has published many articles, editions, introductions, and book chapters on both Trollope and Beerbohm. In his later career, Hall has written a memoir and two novels.

==Education== Hall graduated with a B.A. and M.A. from [[Seton Hall]] (1955 and 1967), and a Ph.D. from [[New York University]] (1970).<ref>{{cite web|last1=CUNY Graduate Center|title=Ph.D. Program in English|url=http://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Doctoral-Programs/English/Faculty-by-Field/N-John-Hall|accessdate=18 May 2016}}</ref>

==Career== Hall was a professor of English at [[Bronx Community College]] of the [[City University of New York]] (1970–2010) and at the [[CUNY Graduate Center]] (1980–2010). In 1983, CUNY named him Distinguished Professor; upon retirement in 2011, he became CUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

Hall has received numerous scholarly awards including fellowships from the [[National Endowment for the Humanities]]; the [[American Council of Learned Societies]]; and, from the [[John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship|Guggenheim Foundation]] in 1976 and 1984.<ref>{{cite web|last1=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation|title=Fellows|url=http://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/n-john-hall/|accessdate=18 May 2016}}</ref>

Hall started his scholarly career with several books on Anthony Trollope. This interest began in graduate school where his dissertation was an annotated edition of a never-before-published book of social criticism by Trollope (1855–56). This work was brought out as ''The New Zealander'' in 1972.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Cushman|first1=Keith|title=Review: The New Zealander by Anthony Trollope, N. John Hall|journal=Modern Philology|date=Aug 1974|volume=72|issue=1|pages=96–100|doi=10.1086/390546}}</ref> Hall followed this publication with various editions and books on Trollope including ''Trollope and His Illustrators'' (Macmillan, 1980). In 1983, he published the first complete edition of Trollope's letters. His work on Trollope culminated in ''Trollope: a Biography'' (Oxford University Press, 1991), an authoritative work that [[Anthony Burgess]] called the "a kind of thanksgiving”<ref>{{cite news|last1=Burgess|first1=Anthony|title=Review of Trollope: A Biography|work=The Independent|date=11 Oct 1991}}</ref> and which prompted Clive Davis in The ''Times'' to assert that Hall was "arguably the world's leading Trollope scholar."<ref>{{cite news|last1=Davis|first1=Clive|title=Uncloistered at Last, the Trollope Lovers Gather|agency=The Times|date=20 Nov 1991}}</ref>

Hall went on to publish extensively on Max Beerbohm, including an art book, ''Max Beerbohm Caricatures'' (Yale, 1997) and a biography, ''Max Beerbohm: A Kind of a Life'' (Yale, 2002), which the New York ''Times'' called “an attractively spry romp around Beerbohm’s life and repute.”<ref>{{cite news|last1=Cunningham|first1=Valentine|title=The Incomparable|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/19/books/the-incomparable.html|accessdate=12 May 2016|work=New York Times|date=19 Jan 2003}}</ref> Observing Hall's distinctive approach to his biographical subjects, Thomas Hodgkinson wrote, “Sooner or later everybody gets the biography they deserve.” <ref>{{cite journal|last1=Hodgkinson|first1=Thomas|title=The Mask behind the Face|journal=Literary Review|date=Dec 2002|pages=27–28}}</ref> Hall himself noted that the biography of Trollope was "long, inclusive," and as "impersonal" as possible; whereas the Beerbohm biography was "quite different--short, selective and personal."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hall|first1=N. John|title=Max Beerbohm: A Kind of Life|date=2002|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven|isbn=978-0300097054|pages=xii|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/maxbeerbohmkindo0000hall}}</ref>

His recent books include ''Belief: A Memoir'' (Beil, 2007) and two connected [[epistolary novels]], ''Correspondence: An Adventure in Letters'' (Godine, 2011) and ''Bibliophilia: A Novel'' (Godine, 2016). Of ''Correspondance'', Colleen Mondor writes that the book “serves as an armchair education on Victorian literature. . . . These are literary lessons at their most amiable and a tonic to the chaos of the world around us."<ref>{{cite web|last1=Mondor|first1=Colleen|title=Review: Correspondence: An Adventure in Letters|url=http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2011_06_017840.php|website=Bookslut|accessdate=19 May 2016}}</ref> In addition, Hall has edited and introduced many books for Oxford World's Classics, Yale University Press, Arno Press, and others.

Hall was a regular member of the graduate faculty in English at the CUNY Graduate Center where he taught courses in 19th-century fiction, specializing in the novel, and where he supervised many Ph.D.s. But Hall also simultaneously taught for decades at a CUNY community college in the South Bronx, in one of the poorest congressional districts in the United States<ref>{{cite news|last1=Kamer|first1=Foster|title=The Poorest Congressional District in America? Right Here, in New York City|url=http://www.villagevoice.com/news/the-poorest-congressional-district-in-america-right-here-in-new-york-city-6725868|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150615020819/http://www.villagevoice.com/news/the-poorest-congressional-district-in-america-right-here-in-new-york-city-6725868|url-status=dead|archive-date=June 15, 2015|accessdate=22 May 2016|agency=The Village Voice|date=30 Sep 2010}}</ref> where he typically worked with under-resourced and under-prepared college students. Some have seen Hall's scholarly accomplishments as a strange distinction for a community college English professor. As Burgess noted, Hall's immersion in Trollope's world "must be very comforting to a man who works in the Bronx.”<ref>{{cite news|last1=Burgess|first1=Anthony|title=Review of Trollope: A Biography|work=The Independent|date=11 Oct 1991}}</ref> And Gene Maeroff, too, observed that Hall's scholarly writing is "removed from the needs of students who must undergo remedial studies."<ref>{{cite news|last1=Maeroff|first1=Gene I.|title=Noted Scholar Thrives at Community College|work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/02/nyregion/noted-scholar-thrives-at-community-college.html|accessdate=22 May 2016|agency=New York Times|date=2 Apr 1984}}</ref> Hall, however, did not regard his community college teaching as a scholarly contradiction: "'There ought to be serious, productive scholars at a community college,' said Dr. Hall, who has turned down job offers from four-year institutions. 'Otherwise, the students will once again feel shortchanged.'"<ref>{{cite news|last1=Maeroff|first1=Gene I.|title=Noted Scholar Thrives at Community College|work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/02/nyregion/noted-scholar-thrives-at-community-college.html|accessdate=22 May 2016|agency=New York Times|date=2 Apr 1984}}</ref>

==Bibliography== ===Books=== * ''The New Zealander''. (Editor). Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972. * ''Trollope and His Illustrators''. Macmillan, London, 1980. * ''[https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.187681/2015.187681.A-Letters-Of-Anthony-Trollope_djvu.txt The Letters of Anthony Trollope]''. 2 vols. Stanford University Press, 1983. * ''Trollope: A Biography''. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1991. * ''Max Beerbohm Caricatures''. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1997. * ''Max Beerbohm: A Kind of a Life''. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2002. * ''Belief: A Memoir''. Frederic C. Beil, Savannah, 2007. * ''Correspondence: An Adventure in Letters''. David R. Godine, Boston, 2011. * ''Bibliophilia: A Novel''. David R. Godine, Boston, 2016.

===Articles=== * "Seeing Trollope's 'An Autobiography' through the Press: The Correspondence of William Blackwood and Henry Merivale Trollope". The Princeton University Library Chronicle 47.2 (1986): 189–223. * "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/2933053 Trollope and Carlyle]". Nineteenth-Century Fiction 27.2 (Sep., 1972): 197–205.

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links== * [https://njohnhall.wordpress.com/ N. John Hall official blog] * [http://www.godine.com/book-author/n-john-hall/ Author page at David R. Godine, Publisher] * [https://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/350728 Recording of interview with N. John Hall analyzing C.P Snow's ''Trollope: His Life and Art'' on ''Reader's Almanac'', WNYC, Sep 6, 1976] * [https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/22/books/250-words-every-15-minutes.html?pagewanted=all "250 Words Every 15 Minutes," James Kincaid's Review of ''Trollope: A Biography'' in the ''New York Times'']

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, N. John}} [[Category:Living people]] [[Category:1933 births]] [[Category:21st-century American biographers]] [[Category:Bronx Community College faculty]] [[Category:20th-century American biographers]] [[Category:Seton Hall University alumni]] [[Category:New York University alumni]]