Marginal Comment

A Memoir Revisited

K. J. Dover, Stephen Halliwell, Christopher Stray

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781350295827
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350295858
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Marginal Comment, which attracted keen and widespread interest on its original publication in 1994, is the remarkable memoir of one of the most distinguished classical scholars of the modern era. Its author, Sir Kenneth Dover, whose academic publications included the pathbreaking book Greek Homosexuality (1978, reissued by Bloomsbury in 2016), conceived of it as an 'experimental' autobiography – ruthlessly candid in retracing the full range of the author's experiences, both private and public, and unflinching in its attempt to analyse the entanglements between the life of the mind and the life of the body.

Dover's distinguished career involved not only an influential series of writings about the ancient Greeks but also a number of prominent positions of leadership, including the presidencies of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and the British Academy. It was in those positions that he became involved in several high-profile controversies, including the blocking of an honorary degree for Margaret Thatcher from Oxford University, and a bitter debate in the British Academy over the fellowship of Anthony Blunt after his exposure as a former Soviet spy.

This edition of Marginal Comment is much more than a reissue: it includes an introduction which frames the book in relation to its author's life and work, as well as annotations based in part on materials originally excluded by Dover but left in his personal papers on this death. Now newly available, the memoir provides not only the self-portrait of an exceptional individual but a rich case-study in the intersections between an intellectual life and its social contexts.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Editorial Foreword
• Introduction: The Conception and Reception of Marginal Comment (Stephen Halliwell)
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 On Autobiography
• 2 Forebears
• 3 Escape Routes 1920–1932
• 4 Body and Soul 1926–1934
• 5 Exotica 1933–
• 6 Reconstitution 1935–1936
• 7 Transition 1936–1940
• 8 Intermission 1940–1945
• 9 Women, Children and Work 1940–1951
• 10 History, Comedy and Other Things 1949–
• 11 Migration 1951–1960
• 12 People and Power 1955–1966
• 13 Mind and Body 1958–
• 14 Plato and After 1962–1989
• 15 Tributaries 1962–
• 16 The Public 1964–1980
• 17 Fruition 1966–1968
• 18 Revolutions (Fringe) 1968–1975
• 19 Right and Wrong 1969–1983
• 20 Elevations 1970–1993
• 21 Dovers 1972–1982
• 22 College and University 1975–1986
• 23 Style 1977–1994
• 24 Excursions 1979–1984
• 25 The Blunt Affair 1979–1981
• 26 The Aston Affair 1980–1985
• 27 Admissions 1982–1984
• 28 Best Before 1983–
• 29 At Large 1984–1992
• 30 The Thatcher Affair 1985
• 31 A History Man
• 32 Epimetron 1994
• Index
• Copyright