Peter Ackroyd

PETER ACKROYD

Date of Birth: October 5, 1949
Birthplace: London, England
Current Residence: London, England
Education: M.A., Clare College, Cambridge, 1971; Attended Yale University, 1971-73.
Influences, Interests and Interesting Tidbits: I never doubt I can do  anything. But I'm in a constant state of agony over whether I'm any good or not.

My own interest isn't so much in writing historical fiction as it is in writing about the nature of history as such. . .I'm much more interested in playing around with the idea of time.
-Peter Ackroyd, Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Vol. 51

Some of the cadences and the images and the ideas and the perceptions and even the very phrases which occurred in my poetry have recurred in the fiction. It's not as if I've lost the poetry; it's just been transformed into another context. . .I think of myself primarily as a novelist. The other activities are marginal but related—certainly I think my novels and biographies are connected, although not in ways I myself could interpret. I leave that to the critics.
-Peter Ackroyd, Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Vol. 51

[Hawksmoor  is] primarily a novel of ideas, a spirited debate between those who believe. . .that 'the highest passion is Terrour' and those who believe. . .that the new science of rationalism and experimental method will eventually eradicate superstition. . .[A]n unfailingly intelligent work of the imagination.
-Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times Book Review