Nye, Robert

Robert Nye was born in London, England, on March 15, 1939, into a working class family. A precocious student, he attended Southend High School and had published poems in the London Magazine by the age of sixteen. He left school in 1955 and did not pursue additional formal study. Between 1955 and 1961, he worked at a variety of jobs: newspaper reporter, milkman, laborer in a market garden, and orderly in a sanitarium.

Nye married his first wife, Judith Preyed (derivative spelling: Pratt), in 1959. In 1961, they moved to a remote cottage in North Wales where Nye devoted himself full-time to writing. There he developed an interest in the Welsh and Celtic legends reflected later in his fiction and children's literature. His first literary success, Juvenilia I (1961), was a collection of short poems. A second volume, Juvenilia II (1963), won the Eric Gregory Award. To supplement his writing income in the early 1960s, Nye began to review poetry for British literary journals and newspapers. He became the poetry editor for The Scotsman in 1967, and was named poetry critic of The Times in 1971, while also contributing reviews to The Guardian.

Nye expanded his literary genres to include children's literature with the publication of Taliesin and March Has Horse Ears in 1966. Nye published his first novel, Doubtfire, in 1967. That same year he divorced his first wife, then in 1968 married Aileen Campbell. The two moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, where they lived until 1977.

Nye's next publication after Doubtfire was a return to children's literature, Beehunter: Adventures of Beowulf (1968). In 1970, he published another children's book, Wishing Gold, and received the James Kennaway Memorial Award for his collection of short stories, Tales I Told My Mother (1969).

During the early 1970s Nye assumed two new roles: playwright and editor. He wrote numerous plays for BBC radio including “A Bloody Stupit Hole” (1970), “Reynolds, Reynolds” (1971), and “A Doubtful Fire” (1972), and wrote an unpublished libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's opera, Kronia (1970). He continued to write poetry, publishing Darker Ends (1969) and Divisions on a Ground (1976), and edited A Choice of Sir Walter Raleigh's Verse (1972). It was also during this time that Nye wrote several articles and essays on the life of Thomas Chatterton.

Nye held the position of writer in residence at the University of Edinburgh, 1976-1977, during which time he received the Guardian fiction prize, followed by the Hawthornden Prize for his novel Falstaff. He currently resides in Cork, Ireland, writing and maintaining his position as poetry critic for the Scotsman.

Nye's manuscripts are located at three institutions: The University of Texas at Austin; Colgate University in Hamilton, New York; and the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. The materials at the University of Texas were acquired in eleven purchases from 1962 to 1978.

Additional information about Robert Nye and his works may be found in The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 14, and British Novelists Since 1960 (Gale, 1983).

From the guide to the Robert Nye Papers TXRC97-A21., 1911, 1959-1975, (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin)