Scholar, biographer, teacher, administrator, editor, and poet, Lionel Stevenson lived a life of rare dedication to the pursuit and sharing of knowledge. He was proud of his Scots-Irish heritage (he was related to Sir Walter Scott and Joyce Cary), and he was fascinated by genealogy. His biographies all begin generations before their subjects are born. Stevenson's large body of scholarship is fundamentally biographical in approach and orientation, from the early Darwin Among the Poets (1932) to the final, award-winning The Pre-Raphaelite Poets (1972). Though his historical and social criticism is substantial and helpful, his basic interest as a critic is to locate those points where a writer's life and works intersect. He is skilled at uncovering real-life models for characters and events in the novels of his writers, and his analysis of George Meredith's Modern Love (1862) is a paradigm of biographical criticism.

The only child of Henry and Mabel Cary...