Peter D. McDonald
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- University professor
Peter D. McDonald | |
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 Peter D.McDonald | |
| Born | 1964 (age 61–62) Cape Town, South Africa |
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| Employer | University of Oxford |
Peter D. McDonald (born 1964) is a Fellow of St. Hugh's College and Professor of English and Related Literature at the University of Oxford.[1] He was born in Cape Town in 1964 and educated in South Africa and England.[2]
McDonald presented reflections from his own biography in 2022 at the A.S.W. Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography at the University of Pennsylvania under the title, "The Secret Life of Books." The lectures have been recorded and are available and free to listen from a link at the site.[3] The elusive process of what leading book historian, Robert Darnton, calls ‘inner appropriation’ [4] that were the substance of McDonald's lectures were the basis of his 2024 volume, The Double Life of Books. [5]
Artefacts of Writing
In his 2017 book, Artefacts of Writing: Ideas of the State and Communities of Letters from Matthew Arnold to Xu Bing, [6] McDonald charts the intersections between fiction, cultural institutions and politics. The Times Literary Supplement reviewer characterized the book as "dizzying, its depth oceanic."[7]
To accompany the book McDonald maintains the website, "Artefacts of Writing: A site about language, writing, translation and thinking interculturally."[8] The site is an online forum and an exercise in digital curation.
Apartheid censorship
McDonald has explored apartheid censorship South Africa in his 2009 study, The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and Its Cultural Consequences.[9][10]
McDonald is the first researcher to review the archives of the Publications Control Board. His study reviews the impact of government post-publication control. "He analyses the role of censors, writers, publishers and booksellers; and presents a number of case studies."[11] Writing in the Mail & Guardian De Waal observed, "He also gives a full and enlightening account of the historical and political context and details matters from the perspectives of authors and publishers."[12]
Printers of the Mind
The 2002 book, Making Meaning: 'Printers of the Mind' and Other Essays by D. F. McKenzie, which McDonald edited with Michael F. Suarez was published in the series, Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book, by the University of Massachusetts Press.[13] The volume was characterized as effective, clear and even-handed.[14][15]
Literary production as a microcosm
In his 1997 monograph, British Literary Culture and Publishing Practice, 1880–1914, [16] McDonald reframed theories of Pierre Bourdieu about the literary cycle as a microcosm in which writers, critics, publishers, printers, distributors and readers act according to certain laws, established structures and codified practices.[17] He uses as case studies comparisons of Joseph Conrad, Arnold Bennett and Arthur Conan Doyle.[18]
