John Gross
| John Gross | |
|---|---|
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|
| Born |
12 March 1935 London |
| Died | 10 January 2011 (aged 75) |
| Occupation | Author |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | Wadham College, Oxford |
| Spouse | Miriam Gross |
| Children | Tom Gross, Susanna Gross |
John Gross FRSL (12 March 1935 – 10 January 2011) was an eminent English man of letters. A leading intellectual, writer, anthologist, and criticThe Spectator magazine called Gross "the best-read man in Britain", as did The Guardian. He was the editor of The Times Literary Supplement from 1974 to 1981, senior book editor and book critic on the staff of The New York Times from 1983 to 1989, and theatre critic for The Sunday Telegraph from 1989 to 2005. He also worked as assistant editor on Encounter and as literary editor of The New Statesman and Spectator magazines.
Gross was born and brought up in London's East End, to Abraham Gross, a Jewish immigrant from the Polish-Jewish town of Gorokhov, (from where Gross’s family escaped before the entire Jewish population was killed by the Germans), and to Muriel Gross, also of East European Jewish origin, whose parents came from Vitebsk, an area later made famous by the paintings of Chagall. He had one brother, Tony Gross, who founded Cutler and Gross, an international fashion eyewear business popular in the fashion and film industries. Among his cousins was the composer Lionel Bart.
Gross was educated at the Perse School in Cambridge and at the City of London School. A child prodigy, he was admitted to Wadham College, Oxford aged seventeen. After gaining first class honours in English Literature at Oxford he won a fellowship at Princeton, where he undertook post-graduate studies. He then returned to England and taught at Queen Mary, University of London and at King's College, Cambridge, of which he was a fellow from 1962-65. In later life he also taught courses at Columbia and Princeton.
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