University of Essex academic Professor Philip Terry has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL), one of the UK's highest literary honours, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to literature
Professor Terry, of the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, joins the prestigious Fellowship after a distinguished career as a poet, translator, editor and scholar. The RSL's Fellows are among the most celebrated figures in British and international literature, who are deemed to have made a significant contribution to the advancement of literature in the UK.
Professor Terry said: "It was an enormous honour to be elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The roll call consists of a list of world-leading academics and literary titans, from Mary Beard, Simon Schama, Dame Hermione Lee and David Olusoga to Margaret Atwood, J.M. Coetzee, Seamus Heaney and Kazuo Ishiguro. It's mind-boggling. Its current President, Elif Shafak, is committed to putting the 'society' in the Royal Society of Literature, and they are engaged in some projects I really relate to, such as providing libraries to prisons and to homeless shelters."
Founded in 1820, the Royal Society of Literature is a charity dedicated to the advancement of literature. It acts as a voice for the value of literature, honours and encourages great writers, and engages people in reading through an annual programme of awards and prizes. Led by writers, the Society's community of more than 800 Fellows represents the breadth of literary excellence across the UK and works in partnership across the literary sector to celebrate and promote reading and writing.
Professor Terry's acclaimed literary career spans poetry, translation and editorial work. He edited The Penguin Book of Oulipo, published in Penguin Modern Classics in 2020, while Carcanet published his edition of Jean-Luc Champerret's The Lascaux Notebooks – the first anthology of Ice Age poetry – in 2022. His acclaimed translation of Dante's Purgatorio, reimagined on Mersea Island in Essex, was published in 2024.
Professor Terry was formally inducted into the Fellowship at the Society's annual ceremony, where new Fellows sign the historic RSL Roll Book using one of the Society's treasured literary pens. The collection includes pens once owned by literary giants such as Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, T.S. Eliot, Andrea Levy and Jean Rhys.
Professor Terry chose to sign the Roll Book using Lord Byron's pen, reflecting a personal connection through his mother's Gordon family lineage, which shares the Gordon tartan with the Romantic poet, whose full name was George Noel Gordon Byron.
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