Arnold Charles Kettle (17 March 1916 – 24 December 1986) was a British Marxist literary critic, most noted for his authorship of the two-volume work An Introduction to the English Novel (1951).
Kettle was born in Ealing, London, and was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he was a Cambridge Apostle. Influenced by F. R. Leavis in his academic writings, he was a man of the left politically and joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1936, remaining a member for the rest of his life. He was the Open University’s first professor of literature and worked there until his retirement in 1981.
His son is the journalist Martin Kettle.
Selected publications
- Kettle, A. (1951). An Introduction to the English Novel, Volume I (to George Eliot) and (1953) An Introduction to the English Novel, Volume II (Henry James to the present day), Hutchinson University Library.
- Kettle, A., Kott, J., & Taborski, B. (1965). Shakespeare in a changing world.
- Kettle, A. (Ed.) (1972). The nineteenth-century novel: critical essays and documents. Heinemann Educational Publishers.
- Kettle, A. (1991). Literature and Liberation: Selected Essays. Manchester University Press.
References
- ^ Turner, John R. (2004). 'Kettle, Arnold Charles (1916–1986)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004 (online edition). Retrieved 30 December 2022.
- Deacon, Richard, The Cambridge Apostles: a history of Cambridge University's élite intellectual secret society (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986), p. 147. ISBN 0374118205
- Kanwar, A. S., & Kettle, A. (1987). 'An Interview with Arnold Kettle.' Social Scientist, pp. 54-61.
- Hobsbawm, Eric (1987). 'Master of Arts ', Marxism Today, February, p. 29
- Kettle, Martin (2023-09-29). "Look back at Giorgio Napolitano: learn the limits of dogma and how good leaders can change lives". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-10-18.