Skip to main content

Riley, Denise, b 1948 (poet and philosopher)

 Person

Dates

  • Existence: b 1948

Biography

Elizabeth Denise Riley was born in Carlisle in 1948. She was educated for a year at Somerville College, Oxford, and graduated from New Hall, Cambridge. As an undergraduate, she studied English Literature, then Moral Sciences and Fine Art at Cambridge. She completed an MA at the University of Sussex in 1974 on European Philosophy; Social and Political Theory. Her doctoral thesis, also completed at the University of Sussex between 1975 and 1980, ‘Psychology, Politics, Policies: Theories of the Child and Mother’, formed the basis of her book ‘War in the Nursery’, published by Virago in 1983. She began publishing poetry in the 1970s. Her works include: ‘Marxism for Infants’ (1977), ‘No Fee’ (1979, co-contributor, Wendy Mulford), ‘Dry Air’ (1985), ‘Stair Spirit’ (1992), ‘Mop Mop Georgette’ (1993), ‘Selected Poems’ (2000) and ‘Say Something Back’ (2016). She has also published critical and academic works on feminism, political theory, intellectual history, philosophy and affective language, including: ‘War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother’ (1983), ‘Am I That Name?: Feminism and the Category of Women in History’ (1988), ‘The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony’ (2000), ‘Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect’ (2005), ‘The Force of Language’ [co-contributor; J-J Lecercle] 2004, and ‘Time Lived, Without Its Flow’ [2012].

She holds and has held various research and teaching positions, including at North East London Polytechnic; Goldsmiths College, University of London; Brown University; the Tate Gallery (writer-in-residence); the London Consortium; Birkbeck College, University of London; the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton: the University of Michigan; Johns Hopkins University; Cornell University (A.D. White Professor-at-Large); the European Graduate School; Sheffield University: and the University of East Anglia (currently as Professor of History of Ideas and of Poetry, in the Department of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing).

Found in 3 Collections and/or Records:

 File

Cambridge poets (1)

 File
Reference Code: GBR/0012/MS Add.10013/2/49
Scope and Contents

Letters and poems: Denise Riley, eight poems, two with messages added; Nick Totton, 'The Aphasia Murders', 'Fully in the Light' and three single-page texts; John Welch, nine letters and a collaborative text; Martin Thom, poems (mostly pages from magazines) letters and a review; Ian Patterson, document with some poems.

Conditions Governing Access: From the Fonds: The collection contains personal correspondence. The provisions of the Data Protection Act (1998) apply. Access to documents may be restricted if they contain information exempted from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, 2000.
 File

Denise Riley

 File
Reference Code: GBR/0012/MS Add.10013/2/35
Scope and Contents

Poems and letters.

Conditions Governing Access: From the Fonds: The collection contains personal correspondence. The provisions of the Data Protection Act (1998) apply. Access to documents may be restricted if they contain information exempted from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, 2000.
 Fonds

Denise Riley Papers

 Fonds
Reference Code: GBR/0012/MS Add.10087
Scope and Contents

Literary papers and correspondence of Denise Riley, consisting chiefly of letters and texts sent to Riley and a small selection of her (mainly earlier) poetry and critical/academic writing.

Dates: 1966-2015
Conditions Governing Access: The collection is open for consultation by researchers using the Manuscripts Reading Room at Cambridge University Library. For further details on conditions governing access please contact mss@lib.cam.ac.uk. Information about opening hours and obtaining a Cambridge University Library reader's ticket is available from the Library's website (www.lib.cam.ac.uk).

Additional filters:

Type
Archival Object 2
Collection 1
 
Subject
Poetry 1