Miller, Karl, 1931-....

Karl Miller was born in 1931 and grew up in Gilmerton, a mining community near Edinburgh, Scotland. He attended the Royal High School in Edinburgh before leaving Scotland for Cambridge University where he studied under F.R. Leavis. While at Cambridge, Miller served as editor of Granta and thereby inaugurated an important aspect of his career; he was the literary editor of both the Spectator (1958-1961) and the New Statesman (1961-1967) before becoming the editor of the Listener (1967-1973). Miller founded the London Review of Books in 1979 and served as its editor from 1979-1989 and as its coeditor for an additional three years (1989-1992). From 1974 until his retirement in 1992, Miller was the Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of London. Over the course of his career, Miller has published a range of works, including a biography of nineteenth-century Scottish judge and writer Henry Cockburn titled Cockburn's Millenium (1975); collections of literary essays, including Doubles: Studies in Literary History (1985); and his autobiography, Rebecca's Vest (1993).