Icon Books

Richard Appignanesi
Richard Appignanesi - Writer, editor and publisher
Born	(1940-12-20) December 20, 1940 (age 77) Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Occupation	Writer, editor and publisher
Nationality	Canadian
Alma mater	Loyola College (Montreal), BA; University of Sussex, Ph.D.
Period	1972 to present

Richard Appignanesi /æpɪŋʊnˈeɪziː/ (born December 20, 1940) is a Canadian writer and editor. He was the originating editor of the internationally successful illustrated For Beginners book series (since 1991 called the Introducing... series), as well as the author of several of the series' texts. He is a founding publisher and editor of Icon Books. He was founding editor of the Manga Shakespeare series. He is a former executive editor of the journal Third Text, and reviews editor of the policy studies journal Futures.

Appignanesi has authored four novels, a graphic novel, a variety of graphic texts, a volume of poetry, monographs and essays on cultural and literary subjects, and has curated several of projects.

Appignanesi was born in Montreal, Canada of Italian parents. He distinguished himself in music at an early age when, in 1953, he was an E. Archambault Pour Mérite gold medal finalist and obtained a music scholarship at the Montreal Conservatory. He graduated with an Honors BA in English Literature in 1962 from Loyola College, Montreal. He traveled to England in 1967 and, in 1973, completed a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Sussex (The Origins of Art Criticism in the Classical Greek and Later Phases of Antiquity). In the early 1990s he did biographical research on the Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, at King’s College, London.