Name Alan Burns Role Author | Died February 13, 2014 | |
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Books Europe After the Rain: A Novel, Dreamerika! | ||
Alan Burns (29 December 1929 – 23 December 2013) was an English author. Before becoming a full-time writer, he was a libel lawyer for the London Daily Express.
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Biography
Burns was born in London, the second of his parents three sons. He attended Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, and subsequently did national service from 1949 to 1951 in the Royal Army Education Corps. He studied law at Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1956. He was assistant legal manager at Beaverbrook Newspapers from 1959 to 1962. He later taught creative writing at various educational institutions, including the University of East Anglia, Norwich, the City Literary Institute, London, the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and Lancaster University. Burns was the University of East Anglia's first writer-in-residence. Aspiring writers who came under his tutelage included Ian McEwan.
Writing
Burns published eight novels, two books of nonfiction, and a play. His major works include Europe After the Rain, Celebrations, Babel, and Dreamerika! A Surrealist Fantasy. From the 1960s on, he was associated with the loosely constituted circle of experimental British writers influenced by Rayner Heppenstall that includes Stefan Themerson, Eva Figes, Ann Quin and its informal leader, B. S. Johnson.
In 1982 he co-edited (with Charles Sugnet) The Imagination on Trial: British and American writers discuss their working methods, which the Washington Post "Book World" called "diverting, iconoclastic, and compulsively readable". The book included interviews with 11 authors (as well as Burns himself): J. G. Ballard, Eva Figes, John Gardner, Wilson Harris, John Hawkes, B. S. Johnson, Tom Mallin, Michael Moorcock, Grace Paley, Ishmael Reed, and Alan Sillitoe.
Angus Wilson called Burns "one of the two or three most interesting new novelists working in England." Burns died in London, aged 83.