Richard Howard was born in Cleveland and educated at Columbia University and the Sorbonne. Noted for his translations of French literature, including the works of Robbe-Grillet and the memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, Howard is also the author of one of the more important books on contemporary American poetry, Alone with America (1969) as well as a reviewer and critic for Poetry magazine. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for poetry in 1966--67. Howard's most notable poetic achievement is his fine adaptation of Browning's dramatic monologues, first compiled in Untitled Subjects (1969). Harold Bloom writes of them: "Richard Howard's dramatic monologues with their intricate blendings of our… emergent sensibility and the anguish and splendor of the great Victorians represent one of the handful of surprising and refreshing inventions in American poetry of the Sixties."
Robert Scholes is Research Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. He is the author of many books of literary theory.