Look up homage in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Homage may mean:

• Homage, a show of respect.
• Homage (feudal), the medieval oath of allegiance.
• Commendation ceremony, medieval homage ceremony
• "Homage (Magni Nominis Umbra)", a song by Hollenthon from their 1999 album Domus Mundi
• "Homage" (song), a song by And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead from their 2002 album Source Tags & Codes
• Homage, a 2008 DVD/CD combo by violinist James Ehnes
• Homage Comics, a comics imprint.

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Robert Schumann in an 1850 daguerreotype

Robert Schumann,^[1] sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann,^[2] (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law to return to music, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing.

Schumann's published compositions were written exclusively for the piano until 1840; he later composed works for piano and orchestra; many Lieder (songs for voice and piano); four symphonies; an opera; and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Works such as Kinderszenen, Album für die Jugend, Blumenstück and Albumblätter are among his most famous. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication which he jointly founded.

In 1840, against her father's wishes, Schumann married pianist Clara Wieck, daughter of his former teacher, the day before she legally came of age at 21. Had they waited one day, they would have no longer needed her father's consent, which had been the subject of a long and acrimonious legal battle, which found in favor of Clara and Robert. Clara also composed music and had a considerable concert career, the earnings from which formed a substantial part of her father's fortune.

For the last two years of his life, after an attempted suicide, Schumann was confined to a mental institution, at his own request.

Biography[link]

Bust of Robert Schumann in the museum of Zwickau

Music room of Schumann

Early life[link]

House where Robert Schumann was born in 1810

Schumann was born in Zwickau, Saxony, the fifth and last child of the family.^[3] Schumann began to compose before the age of seven, but his boyhood was spent in the cultivation of literature as much as music – undoubtedly influenced by his father, August Schumann, a bookseller, publisher, and novelist.^[4]

Schumann began receiving general musical and piano instruction at the age of seven from Baccalaureus Kuntzsch, a teacher at the Zwickau high school. The boy immediately developed a love of music and worked at creating musical compositions himself, without the aid of Kuntzsch. Even though he often disregarded the principles of musical composition, he created works regarded as admirable for his age. The Universal Journal of Music 1850 supplement included a biographical sketch of Schumann that noted, "It has been related that Schumann, as a child, possessed rare taste and talent for portraying feelings and characteristic traits in melody,—ay, he could sketch the different dispositions of his intimate friends by certain figures and passages on the piano so exactly and comically that every one burst into loud laughter at the similitude of the portrait." (W.J. von Wasielewski 17–19)

At age 14, Schumann wrote an essay on the aesthetics of music and also contributed to a volume, edited by his father, titled Portraits of Famous Men. While still at school in Zwickau, he read the works of the German poet-philosophers Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as well as Byron and the Greek tragedians. His most powerful and permanent literary inspiration was Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, known simply as Jean Paul, a German writer whose influence is seen in Schumann's youthful novels Juniusabende, completed in 1826, and Selene.

Schumann's interest in music was sparked by seeing a performance of Ignaz Moscheles playing at Karlsbad, and he later developed an interest in the works of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn. His father, who had encouraged the boy's musical aspirations, died in 1826 when Schumann was 16. Neither his mother nor his guardian thereafter encouraged a career in music. In 1828 Schumann left school, and after a tour during which he met Heinrich Heine in Munich, he went to Leipzig to study law (to meet the terms of his inheritance). In 1829 his law studies continued in Heidelberg, where he became a lifelong member of Corps Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg. (See also: Corps)

1830–34[link]

During Eastertide 1830 he heard the Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer Niccolò Paganini play in Frankfurt. In July he wrote to his mother, "My whole life has been a struggle between Poetry and Prose, or call it Music and Law." By Christmas he was back in Leipzig, at age 20 taking piano lessons from his old master Frederich Wieck, who assured him that he would be a successful concert pianist after a few years' study with him.

During his studies with Wieck, Schumann permanently injured his right hand. One suggested cause of this injury is that he damaged his finger by the use of a mechanical device designed to strengthen the weakest fingers, a device which held back one finger while he exercised the others. Another suggestion is that the injury was a side-effect of syphilis medication. A more dramatic suggestion is that in an attempt to increase the independence of his fourth finger, he may have undergone a surgical procedure to separate the tendons of the fourth finger from those of the third. The cause of the injury is not known, but Schumann abandoned ideas of a concert career and devoted himself instead to composition. To this end he began a study of music theory under Heinrich Dorn, a German composer six years his senior and, at that time, conductor of the Leipzig opera. About this time Schumann considered composing an opera on the subject of Hamlet.

[edit] Papillons

The fusion of literary ideas with musical ones – known as Program Music – may be said to have first taken shape in Papillons, Op. 2 (Butterflies), a musical portrayal of events in Jean Paul's novel Die Flegeljahre. In a letter from Leipzig dated April 1832, Schumann bids his brothers "read the last scene in Jean Paul's Flegeljahre as soon as possible, because the Papillons are intended as a musical representation of that masquerade." This inspiration is foreshadowed to some extent in his first written criticism, an 1831 essay on Frédéric Chopin's variations on a theme from Mozart's Don Giovanni, published in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. Here Chopin's work is discussed by imaginary characters created by Schumann himself: Florestan (the embodiment of Schumann's passionate, voluble side) and Eusebius (his dreamy, introspective side) – the counterparts of Vult and Walt in Flegeljahre. A third, Meister Raro, is called upon for his opinion. Raro may represent either the composer himself, Wieck's daughter Clara, or the combination of the two (Clara + Robert).

A youthful Robert Schumann

In the winter of 1832, Schumann, 22 at the time, visited relatives in Zwickau and Schneeberg, where he performed the first movement of his Symphony in G minor (without opus number, known as the "Zwickauer"). In Zwickau, the music was performed at a concert given by Clara Wieck, who was then just 13 years old. On this occasion Clara played bravura Variations by Henri Herz, a composer whom Schumann was already deriding as a philistine.^[5] Schumann's mother said to Clara, "You must marry my Robert one day."^[6] Although the Symphony in G minor was not published by Schumann during his lifetime, it has been played and recorded in recent times.

The 1833 deaths of Schumann's brother Julius and his sister-in-law Rosalie in a worldwide cholera epidemic brought on a severe depressive episode. The composer made his first apparent attempt at suicide.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Die neue Zeitschrift für Musik

By spring 1834, Schumann had sufficiently recovered to inaugurate Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), first published on 3 April 1834. Schumann published most of his critical writings in the Journal, and often lambasted the popular taste for flashy technical displays from figures whom Schumann perceived as inferior composers. Schumann campaigned to revive interest in major composers of the past, including Mozart, Beethoven and Weber, while he also promoted the work of some contemporary composers, including Chopin (about whom Schumann famously wrote, "Hats off, Gentlemen! A genius!")^[7] and Hector Berlioz, whom he praised for creating music of substance. On the other hand, Schumann disparaged the school of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. Among Schumann's associates at this time were composers Norbert Burgmüller and Ludwig Schuncke (to whom Schumann's Toccata in C is dedicated).

Schumann's editorial duties during the summer of 1834 were interrupted by his relations with 16-year-old Ernestine von Fricken – the adopted daughter of a rich Bohemian-born noble – to whom he became engaged. Schumann broke off that engagement due to his growing attraction to 15-year-old Clara Wieck. They made mutual declarations of love in December in Zwickau, where Clara appeared in concert.

Having learned in August 1835 that Ernestine von Fricken was born illegitimate, which meant that she would have no dowry, and fearful that her limited means would force him to earn his living like a "day-labourer", Schumann made a complete break with her toward the end of the year. His budding romance with Clara was soon brought to an end when her father learned of their trysts during the Christmas holidays; he summarily forbade them further meetings and ordered all correspondence between them burnt.

[edit] Carnaval

Robert Schumann, lithograph by Josef Kriehuber, in 1839.

Carnaval, Op. 9 (1834) is one of Schumann's most characteristic piano works. Schumann begins nearly every section of Carnaval with a musical cryptogram, the musical notes signified in German by the letters that spell Asch (A, E-flat, C, and B, or alternatively A-flat, C, and B; in German these are A, Es, C and H, and As, C and H respectively), the Bohemian town in which Ernestine was born, and the notes are also the musical letters in Schumann's own name. Schumann named sections for both Ernestine ("Estrella") and Clara ("Chiarina"). Eusebius and Florestan, the imaginary figures appearing so often in his critical writings, also appear, alongside brilliant imitations of Chopin and Paganini. The work comes to a close with a march of the Davidsbündler – the league of King David's men against the Philistines – in which may be heard the clear accents of truth in contest with the dull clamour of falsehood embodied in a quotation from the seventeenth century Grandfather's Dance. The march, a step nearly always in duple meter, is here in 3/4 time (triple meter). The work ends in joy and a degree of mock-triumph. In Carnaval, Schumann went further than in Papillons, by conceiving the story as well as the musical representation (and also displaying a maturation of compositional resource).

1835–39[link]

On 3 October 1835, Schumann met Felix Mendelssohn at Wieck's house in Leipzig, and his enthusiastic appreciation of that artist was shown with the same generous freedom that distinguished his acknowledgement of Chopin's greatness and most of his other colleagues, and which later prompted him to publicly pronounce the then-unknown Johannes Brahms a genius.

Clara Wieck in 1838

Despite the opposition of Clara's father, she and Robert continued a clandestine relationship which matured into a full-blown romance. In 1837, he asked her father's consent to their marriage, but was refused. Wieck ridiculed his daughter's wish to "throw herself away on a penniless composer."^{[citation needed]}

In the series of piano pieces Fantasiestücke, Op. 12, Schumann expresses the fusion of literary and musical ideas as embodied conceptions in such pieces as "Warum" and "In der Nacht". After he had written the latter of these two, he detected in the music the fanciful suggestion of a series of episodes from the myth of Hero and Leander. The collection begins, in "Des Abends", with a notable example of Schumann's predilection for rhythmic ambiguity, as unrelieved syncopation plays heavily against the time signature, (leading to a feeling of 3/8 in a movement marked 2/8) somewhat analogous to that of the first movement of Faschingsschwank aus Wien. After a fable – and the appropriately titled "Dream's Confusion" – the collection ends on an introspective note in the manner of Eusebius.^{[citation needed]}

In 1837 Schumann published his Symphonic Studies, a complex set of étude-like variations written in 1834–1835, which demanded a finished piano technique. These variations were based on a theme by the adoptive father of Ernestine von Fricken. The work – described as "one of the peaks of the piano literature, lofty in conception and faultless in workmanship" [Hutcheson] – was dedicated to the young English composer William Sterndale Bennett for whom Schumann had had a high regard when they worked together in Leipzig.

The Davidsbündlertänze, Op.6, (also published in 1837 despite the low opus number) literally "Dances of the League of David", is an embodiment of the struggle between enlightened Romanticism and musical philistinism. Schumann credited the two sides of his character with the composition of the work (the more passionate numbers are signed F. (Florestan) and the more dreamy signed E. (Eusebius)). The work begins with the 'motto of C.W.' (Clara Wieck) denoting her support for the ideals of the Davidsbund The Bund was a work of Schumann's imagination, members of which were kindred spirits (as he saw them) such as Chopin, Paganini and Clara, as well as the personalized Florestan and Eusebius.

Kinderszenen, Op. 15, completed in 1838 and a favourite of Schumann's piano works, depicts the innocence and playfulness of childhood. The "Träumerei", No. 7 of the set, is one of the most famous piano pieces ever written, which has been performed in myriad forms and transcriptions. It has been the favourite encore of several great pianists, including Vladimir Horowitz. Melodic and deceptively simple, the piece has been described as "complex" in its harmonic structure.^[8]

	Kreisleriana, Op. 16 (1838) N8. Schnell und spielend Giorgi Latsabidze, piano
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Kreisleriana (1838), considered one of Schumann's greatest works, carried his fantasy and emotional range deeper. Johannes Kreisler was the fictional poet created by poet E. T. A. Hoffmann, and characterized as a "romantic brought into contact with reality". Schumann used the figure to express emotional states in music that is "fantastic and mad." According to Hutcheson ("The Literature of the Piano"), this work is "among the finest efforts of Schumann's genius. He never surpassed the searching beauty of the slow movements (Nos. 2, 4, 6) or the urgent passion of others (Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7)...To appreciate it a high level of aesthetic intelligence is required...This is no facile music, there is severity alike in its beauty and its passion."

	Fantasie C major, Op. 17 (1836, revised 1839) 1. Sempre Fantasticamente ed Appassionatamente 2. Moderato, Sempre energico 3. Lento sostenuto Sempre piano
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The Fantasie in C, Op. 17, composed in the summer of 1836, is a work of passion and deep pathos, imbued with the spirit of the late Beethoven. Schumann intended to use proceeds from sales of the work toward the construction of a monument to Beethoven (who had died in 1827). The first movement of the Fantasie contains a musical quote from Beethoven's song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98 (at the Adagio coda, taken from the last song of the cycle). The original titles of the movements were to be "Ruins", "Triumphal Arch" and "The Starry Crown". According to Liszt,^[9] who played the work for Schumann, and to whom it was dedicated, the Fantasie was apt to be played too heavily, and should have a dreamier (träumerisch) character than vigorous German pianists tended to impart. Liszt also said, "It is a noble work, worthy of Beethoven, whose career, by the way, it is supposed to represent."^[10] Again according to Hutcheson: "No words can describe the Phantasie, no quotations set forth the majesty of its genius. It must suffice to say that it is Schumann's greatest work in large form for piano solo."^{[citation needed]}

After a visit to Vienna during which he discovered Franz Schubert's previously unknown Symphony No. 9 in C, in 1839 Schumann wrote the Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival Prank from Vienna). Most of the joke is in the central section of the first movement, in which a thinly veiled reference is made to the "Marseillaise" (the song had been banned in Vienna due to harsh memories of Napoleon's invasion). The festive mood does not preclude moments of melancholic introspection in the Intermezzo.

After a long and acrimonious legal battle with her father, Schumann married Clara Wieck on 12 September 1840, at Schönefeld. They finally resolved the battle by waiting until she was of legal age and no longer subject to her father's consent for marriage. Their marriage proved a remarkable business partnership with Clara acting as an inspiration, critic, and confidant to her husband. Despite her delicate appearance, she was an extremely strong-willed and energetic woman who kept up a demanding schedule of concert tours in between bearing multiple children. Two years after they married, Friedrich Wieck at last reconciled with the couple, eager to see his grandchildren.

1840–49[link]

In the years 1832–1839, Schumann had written almost exclusively for the piano, but in 1840 alone he wrote 168 songs. Indeed 1840 (referred to as the Liederjahr or year of song) is highly significant in Schumann's musical legacy despite his earlier deriding of works for piano and voice as inferior.

Prior to the legal case and subsequent marriage, the lovers exchanged love letters and rendezvoused in secret. Robert would often wait in a cafe for hours in a nearby city just to see Clara for a few minutes after one of her concerts. The strain of this long courtship (they finally married in 1840), and of its consummation, led to this great outpouring of Lieder (vocal songs with piano accompaniment). This is evident in "Widmung", for example, where he uses the melody from Schubert's "Ave Maria" in the postlude—in homage to Clara. Schumann's biographers have attributed the sweetness, the doubt and the despair of these songs to the varying emotions aroused by his love for Clara and the uncertainties of their future together.

Robert and Clara had eight children, Emil (who died in infancy in 1847); Marie (1841–1929); Elise (1843–1928); Julie (1845–1872); Ludwig (1848–1899); Ferdinand (1849–1891); Eugenie (1851–1938); and Felix (1854–1879).

Profiles of Clara and Robert Schumann

His chief song-cycles of this period were his settings of the Liederkreis of Joseph von Eichendorff, Op. 39 (depicting a series of moods relating to or inspired by nature); the Frauenliebe und -leben of Chamisso, Op. 42 (relating the tale of a woman's marriage, childbirth and widowhood); the Dichterliebe of Heine, Op. 48 (depicting a lover rejected, but coming to terms with his painful loss through renunciation and forgiveness); and Myrthen, a collection of songs, including poems by Goethe, Rückert, Heine, Byron, Burns and Moore. The songs Belsatzar, Op. 57 and Die beiden Grenadiere, Op. 49, both to Heine's words, show Schumann at his best as a ballad writer, although the dramatic ballad is less congenial to him than the introspective lyric. The Opp. 35, 40 and 98a sets (words by Justinus Kerner, Chamisso and Goethe respectively), although less well known, also contain songs of lyric and dramatic quality.

Franz Grillparzer said,

"He has made himself a new ideal world in which he moves almost as he wills."

Despite his achievements, Schumann received few tokens of honour; he was awarded a doctoral degree by the University of Jena in 1840, and in 1843 a professorship in the Conservatory of Music, which Felix Mendelssohn had founded in Leipzig that same year. On one occasion, accompanying his wife on a concert tour in Russia, Schumann was asked whether "he too was a musician". He often harbored considerable resentment over Clara's success as a pianist, which exceeded his own reputation as a composer (Schumann had had dreams of being a concert pianist himself, but his playing abilities were never as good as his wife's, possibly due to muscle damage in his hands from mercury treatment for syphilis).

	Andante and Variations, Op. 46 (1843) Performed by Neal and Nancy O'Doan (pianos), Carter Enyeart and Toby Saks (cellos) and Christopher Leuba (horn) Introduction, Theme and Variations 1–5 Variations 6–10 Variations 11–15
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In 1841 he wrote two of his four symphonies, No. 1 in B flat, Op. 38, "Spring" and No. 4 in D minor (first published in one movement, but later revised extensively and published as Op. 120 – a work that is a pioneering essay in 'cyclic form'). He devoted 1842 to composing chamber music, including the Piano Quintet in E flat, Op. 44, now one of his best known and most admired works; the Piano Quartet and three string quartets. In 1843 he wrote Paradise and the Peri, his first essay at concerted vocal music, an oratorio style work based on Lalla-Rookh by Thomas Moore. After this, his compositions were not confined to any one form during any particular period.

The stage in his life when he was deeply engaged in setting Goethe's Faust to music (1844–53) was a critical one for his health. He spent the first half of 1844 with Clara on tour in Russia. On returning to Germany, he abandoned his editorial work and left Leipzig for Dresden, where he suffered from persistent "nervous prostration". As soon as he began to work, he was seized with fits of shivering and an apprehension of death, experiencing an abhorrence for high places, for all metal instruments (even keys), and for drugs. Schumann's diaries also state that he suffered perpetually from imagining that he had the note A5 sounding in his ears.

His state of unease and neurasthenia is reflected in his Symphony in C, numbered second, but third in order of composition, in which the composer explores states of exhaustion, obsession and depression, culminating in Beethovenian spiritual triumph. Also published in 1845 was his Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54, originally published as a one-movement Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra. It is one of the most popular and oft-recorded of all piano concertos; pace Hutcheson "Schumann achieved a masterly work and we inherited the finest piano concerto since Mozart and Beethoven".

In 1846, he felt he had recovered. In the winter, the Schumanns revisited Vienna, traveling to Prague and Berlin in the spring of 1847 and in the summer to Zwickau, where he was received with enthusiasm. This pleased him, since at that time he was famous in only Dresden and Leipzig.

His only opera, Genoveva, Op. 81, was written in 1848. In it, Schumann attempted to abolish recitative, which he regarded as an interruption to the musical flow (an influence on Richard Wagner; Schumann's consistently flowing melody can be seen as a forerunner to Wagner's Melos). The subject of Genoveva—based on Ludwig Tieck and Christian Friedrich Hebbel—was not an ideal choice. The text is often considered to lack dramatic qualities; the work has not remained in the repertoire. As early as 1842 the possibilities of German opera had been keenly realized by Schumann, who wrote, "Do you know my prayer as an artist, night and morning? It is called 'German Opera.' Here is a real field for enterprise . . . something simple, profound, German." And in his notebook of suggestions for the text of operas are found amongst others: Nibelungen, Lohengrin and Till Eulenspiegel.

The music to Byron's Manfred was written in 1849, the overture of which is one of Schumann's most frequently performed orchestral works. The insurrection of Dresden caused Schumann to move to Kreischa, a little village a few miles outside the city. In August 1849, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Goethe's birth, such scenes of Schumann's Faust as were already completed were performed in Dresden, Leipzig and Weimar. Liszt gave him assistance and encouragement. The rest of the work was written later in 1849, and the overture (which Schumann described as "one of the sturdiest of [his] creations") in 1853.

Grave of Robert and Clara Schumann at Bonn

Robert Schumann monument at his birthplace Zwickau, Germany

After 1850[link]

From 1850 to 1854, Schumann composed in a wide variety of genres. Critics have disputed the quality of his work at this time; a widely held view has been that his music showed signs of mental breakdown and creative decay. More recently, critics have suggested that the changes in style may be explained by "lucid experimentation".^[11]

In 1850, Schumann succeeded Ferdinand Hiller as musical director at Düsseldorf, but he was a poor conductor and quickly aroused the opposition of the musicians. According to Schonberg (The Great Conductors) "The great composer was impossible on the platform...There is something heartrending about poor Schumann's epochal inefficiency as a conductor."^{[citation needed]} His contract was eventually terminated. From 1851 to 1853 he visited Switzerland, Belgium and Leipzig. In 1851 he completed his Symphony No. 3, "Rhenish" (a work containing five movements and whose 4th movement is apparently intended to represent an episcopal coronation ceremony). He revised what would be published as his fourth symphony.

On 30 September 1853, the 20-year-old composer Johannes Brahms knocked unannounced on the door of the Schumanns carrying a letter of introduction from violinist Joseph Joachim. (Schumann was not at home, and would not meet Brahms until the next day.) Brahms amazed Clara and Robert with his music, stayed with them for several weeks, and became a close family friend. (He later worked closely with Clara to popularize Schumann's compositions during her long widowhood.)

During this time Schumann, Brahms and Schumann's pupil Albert Dietrich collaborated on the composition of the F-A-E Sonata for Joachim; Schumann also published an article, "Neue Bahnen" ("New Paths") in the Neue Zeitschrift (his first article in many years), hailing the unknown young Brahms from Hamburg, a man who had published nothing, as "the Chosen One" who "was destined to give ideal expression to the times."^[12] It was an extraordinary way to present Brahms to the musical world, setting up great expectations which he did not fulfill for many years.^[13] In January 1854, Schumann went to Hanover, where he heard a performance of his Paradise and the Peri organized by Joachim and Brahms. Two years later at Schumann's request, the work received its first English performance conducted by William Sterndale Bennett.

	"Nänie", 3 Lieder für 3 Frauenstimmen, Op. 114, No. 1 (1853) (2.4 Mb)
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Schumann returned to Düsseldorf and began to edit his complete works and make an anthology on the subject of music. He suffered a renewal of the symptoms that had threatened him earlier. Besides the single note (possibly evidence of tinnitus), he imagined that voices sounded in his ear and he heard angelic music. One night he suddenly left his bed, having dreamt or imagined that a ghost (purportedly the spirit of either Schubert or Mendelssohn) had dictated a "spirit theme" to him. The theme was one he had used several times before: in his Second String Quartet, again in his Lieder-Album für die Jugend, and finally in the slow movement of his Violin Concerto. In the days leading up to his suicide attempt, Schumann wrote five variations on this theme for the piano, his last published work.^[14] Brahms published it in a supplementary volume to the complete edition of Schumann's piano music. In 1861 Brahms published his Variations for Piano Four Hands, Op. 23, based on this theme.

In late February 1854, Schumann's symptoms increased, the angelic visions sometimes being replaced by demonic visions. He warned Clara that he feared he might do her harm. On 27 February 1854, he attempted suicide by throwing himself from a bridge into the Rhine River. Rescued by boatmen and taken home, he asked to be taken to an asylum for the insane. He entered Dr. Franz Richarz's sanatorium in Endenich, a quarter of Bonn, and remained there until he died on 29 July 1856 at the age of 46. During his confinement, he was not allowed to see Clara. She finally visited him two days before his death. He appeared to recognize her, but was unable to speak.

Given his reported symptoms, one modern view is that his death was a result of syphilis, which he may have contracted during his student days, and which would have remained latent during most of his marriage.^[15] According to studies by the musicologist and literary scholar Eric Sams, Schumann's symptoms during his terminal illness and death appear consistent with those of mercury poisoning, mercury being a common treatment for syphilis and other conditions. Another possibility is that his neurological problems were the result of an intracranial mass. A report by Janisch and Nauhaus on Schumann's autopsy indicates that he had a "gelatinous" tumor at the base of the brain; it may have represented a colloid cyst, a craniopharyngioma, a chordoma, or a chordoid meningioma.^[16] In particular, meningiomas are known to produce musical auditory hallucinations, such as Schumann reported.^[17] Still other sources surmise that Schumann had bipolar disorder, citing his mood swings and changes in productivity.^[18][19][20]

From the time of her husband's death, Clara devoted herself to the performance and interpretation of her husband's works. In 1856, she first visited England, but the critics received Schumann's music coolly. Critics such as Henry Fothergill Chorley were particularly harsh in their disapproval. She returned to London in 1865 and made regular appearances there in later years. She became the authoritative editor of her husband's works for Breitkopf & Härtel. It was rumoured that she and Brahms destroyed many of Schumann's later works, which they thought to be tainted by his madness. However, only the Five Pieces for Cello and Piano are known to have been destroyed. Most of Schumann's late works, particularly the Violin Concerto, the Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra and the Third Violin Sonata, all from 1853, have entered the repertoire.

Legacy[link]

Robert Schumann Birth House in Zwickau in 2005

The Schumann/Schubert error: Schubert's music is on the top stamp, and Schumann's on the bottom

1960 Soviet stamp marking the 150th anniversary of Schumann's birth.

Schumann had considerable influence in the nineteenth century and beyond, despite his adoption of more conservative modes of composition after his marriage. He left an array of acclaimed music in virtually all the forms then known. Partly through his protégé Brahms, Schumann's ideals and musical vocabulary became widely disseminated. Composer Sir Edward Elgar called Schumann "my ideal."

Schumann has not often been confused with Austrian composer Franz Schubert, but one well-known example occurred in 1956, when East Germany issued a pair of postage stamps featuring Schumann's picture against an open score that featured Schubert's music. The stamps were soon replaced by a pair featuring music written by Schumann.

Compositions[link]

• List of compositions by Robert Schumann
• Category:Compositions by Robert Schumann

Fictional portrayals[link]

• Song of Love was a 1947 film starring Paul Henreid as Schumann, Katharine Hepburn as Clara Wieck, Robert Walker as Johannes Brahms and Henry Daniell as Franz Liszt.
• Peter Schamoni's 1983 movie Frühlingssinfonie (Spring Symphony) tells the story of Robert and Clara's romance, against her father's opposition. Robert was played by Herbert Grönemeyer, Clara by Nastassja Kinski, and Clara's father by Rolf Hoppe. The role of Niccolò Paganini was played by the violinist Gidon Kremer. The score was written by Grönemeyer and conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch.
• The Andrew Crumey novel Mobius Dick has a chapter depicting Schumann at Endenich.
• Geliebte Clara was a 2008 film taking a look at the lives of 19th-century composers Clara and Robert Schumann.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Daverio, J, "Robert Schumann," Grove music online, L Macy (ed), accessed 24 June 2007 (subscription access)
• Ostwald, Peter, Schumann – The inner voices of a musical genius, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1985 ISBN 1-55553-014-1.
• Scholes, Percy A, The Oxford Companion to Music, Tenth Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1970 ISBN 01931130661.
• Fuller-Maitland, John Alexander. (1884). Schumann. S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00481-7)
• Ostwald, Peter (1985). Schumann, The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius. Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1-55553-014-1. 
• Perrey, Beate (ed.) (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Schumann. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78950-8. 
• Rice-See, Lynn (2008). The Piano Teaching of Walter Hautzig with 613 Examples from the Works of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Chopin, Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-4981-7
• Tunbridge, Laura (2007). Schumann's Late Style. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87168-6. 
• Worthen, John (2007). Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11160-6. . The author argues that the composer was mentally normal all his life, until the sudden onset of insanity near the end resulting from tertiary syphilis.

External links[link]

Find more about Robert Schumann on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

Life and works[link]

• [1] More on Robert Schumann and his life
• Robert Schumann – The World's Greatest Composer A personal appreciation
• Complete list of works
• Musical Rules at Home and in Life – Text by Robert Schumann
• Works by or about Robert Schumann in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• German Label Troubadisc with SACD release and Biography of Robert Schumann
• Schumann-Portal
• Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig: edition of all letters written by Robert and Clara Schumann
• The Lied and Art Song Texts Page – Created and mantained from Emily Ezust Texts of Schumann's Lieder with translations in various languages
• The city of Robert Schumann
• Listings of live performances at Bachtrack
• Robert and Clara Schumann and their teacher, Johann Sebastian Bach

Sheet music[link]

• Printable Schumann's piano score in PDF
• Free scores by Robert Schumann at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Robert Schumann in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Schumann's Scores by Mutopia Project
• Works by Robert Schumann at Project Gutenberg
• Free scores by Robert Schumann in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)

Recordings and MIDI[link]

• Schumann cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
• Recording of Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood)
• Works for organ or pedal piano by Schumann played on a virtual organ
• Selected Lieder (MIDI)
• Kunst der Fuge Robert Schumann – MIDI files
• Herbert von Karajan / Vienna Philharmonic rehearse the 4th Symphony
• Yaroslav Senyshyn – Live Performance of Robert Schumann: Papillons Op. 2

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2010)

Stephen King
Stephen King, February 2007
Born	Stephen Edwin King (1947-09-21) September 21, 1947 (age 64) Portland, Maine
Pen name	Richard Bachman, John Swithen
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, columnist, actor, television producer, film director
Alma mater	University of Maine (B.A., English, 1970)
Genres	Horror, fantasy, science fiction, drama, gothic, genre fiction, dark fantasy
Notable work(s)	Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, It, and The Dark Tower
Spouse(s)	Tabitha King
Children	Naomi King Joe King Owen King
Influences Burton Hatlen[1] Bram Stoker Elmore Leonard Shirley Jackson H. P. Lovecraft Richard Matheson Ray Bradbury[2] Edgar Allan Poe[3] John D. MacDonald Don Robertson
Influenced Peter David[4] J. J. Abrams[5] Damon Lindelof[5] Jeaniene Frost[6]
Signature
www.stephenking.com

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies^[7] and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books. As of 2011, King has written and published 49 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, five non-fiction books, and nine collections of short stories. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.

King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, British Fantasy Society Awards, his novella The Way Station was a Nebula Award novelette nominee,^[8] and in 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.^[9] He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his whole career, such as the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (2004), the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America (2007).^[10]

Early life[link]

King's father, Donald Edwin King, who was born circa 1913 in Peru, Indiana, was a merchant seaman.^[11] King's mother, Nellie Ruth (née Pillsbury; March 13, 1913 – December 28, 1973) was born in Scarborough, Maine.^[11] They were married July 23, 1939, in Cumberland County, Maine.^[11]

Stephen King was born September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine. When King was two years old, his father left the family under the pretense of "going to buy a pack of cigarettes," leaving his mother to raise King and his adopted older brother, David, by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to De Pere, Wisconsin, Fort Wayne, Indiana and Stratford, Connecticut. When King was eleven years old, the family returned to Durham, Maine, where Ruth King cared for her parents until their deaths. She then became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged.^[12] King was raised Methodist.^[13]

As a child, King apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving home to play with the boy, King returned, speechless and seemingly in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend's death. Some commentators have suggested that this event may have psychologically inspired some of King's darker works,^[14] but King makes no mention of it in his memoir On Writing.^[15]

King's primary inspiration for writing horror fiction was related in detail in his 1981 non-fiction Danse Macabre, in a chapter titled "An Annoying Autobiographical Pause". King makes a comparison of his uncle successfully dowsing for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. While browsing through an attic with his elder brother, King uncovered a paperback version of an H.P. Lovecraft collection of short stories entitled The Lurker in the Shadows that had belonged to his father. The cover art—an illustration of a yellow-green Demon hiding within the recesses of a Hellish cavern beneath a tombstone—was, he writes, the moment in his life which "that interior dowsing rod responded to.” King told Barnes & Noble Studios during a 2009 interview, "I knew that I'd found home when I read that book."^[16]

Education and early career[link]

King attended Durham Elementary School and graduated from Lisbon Falls High School, in Lisbon Falls, Maine. He displayed an early interest in horror as an avid reader of EC's horror comics, including Tales from the Crypt (he later paid tribute to the comics in his screenplay for Creepshow). He began writing for fun while still in school, contributing articles to Dave's Rag, the newspaper that his brother published with a mimeograph machine, and later began selling stories to his friends which were based on movies he had seen (though when discovered by his teachers, he was forced to return the profits). The first of his stories to be independently published was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", serialized over three published and one unpublished issue of a fanzine, Comics Review, in 1965.^[17] That story was published the following year in a revised form as "In a Half-World of Terror" in another fanzine, Stories of Suspense, edited by Marv Wolfman.^[18]

From 1966, King studied English at the University of Maine, graduating in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. That same year his first daughter, Naomi Rachel, was born. He wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Maine Campus, titled "Steve King's Garbage Truck", took part in a writing workshop organized by Burton Hatlen,^[1] and took odd jobs to pay for his studies, including one at an industrial laundry. He sold his first professional short story, "The Glass Floor", to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967.^[12] The Fogler Library at the University of Maine now holds many of King's papers.

After leaving the university, King earned a certificate to teach high school but, being unable to find a teaching post immediately, initially supplemented his laboring wage by selling short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier. Many of these early stories have been published in the collection Night Shift. In 1971, King married Tabitha Spruce, a fellow student at the University of Maine whom he had met at the University's Fogler Library after one of Professor Hatlen's workshops.^[1] That fall, King was hired as a teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. He continued to contribute short stories to magazines and worked on ideas for novels.^[12] It was during this time that King developed a drinking problem, which would plagued him for more than a decade.^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography[link]

1970s–1980s work[link]

In 1973, King's novel Carrie was accepted by publishing house Doubleday. King threw an early draft of the novel in the trash after becoming discouraged with his progress writing about a teenage girl with psychic powers. His wife retrieved the manuscript and encouraged him to finish it.^[19] His advance for Carrie was $2,500, with paperback rights earning $400,000 at a later date. King and his family moved to southern Maine because of his mother's failing health. At this time, he began writing a book titled Second Coming, later titled Jerusalem's Lot, before finally changing the title to 'Salem's Lot (published 1975). In a 1987 issue of The Highway Patrolman magazine, he stated, "The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!"^[20] Soon after the release of Carrie in 1974, his mother died of uterine cancer. His Aunt Emrine read the novel to her before she died. King has written of his severe drinking problem at this time, stating that he was drunk delivering the eulogy at his mother's funeral.^[15]

After his mother's death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where King wrote The Shining (published 1977). The family returned to western Maine in 1975, where King completed his fourth novel, The Stand (published 1978). In 1977, the family, with the addition of Owen Phillip (his third and last child), traveled briefly to England, returning to Maine that fall where King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine. He has kept his primary residence in Maine ever since.^{[citation needed]}

In 1985 King wrote his first work for the comic book medium,^[21] writing a few pages of the benefit X-Men comic book Heroes for Hope Starring the X-Men. The book, whose profits were donated to assist with famine relief in Africa, was written by a number of different authors in the comic book field, such as Chris Claremont, Stan Lee, and Alan Moore, as well as authors not primarily associated with that industry, such as Harlan Ellison.^[22] The following year, King wrote the introduction to Batman #400, an anniversary issue in which he expressed his preference for that character over Superman.^[23][24]

[edit] The Dark Tower books

Stephen King at the Harvard Book Store, January 8, 2007

In the late 1970s, King began what became a series of interconnected stories about a lone gunslinger, Roland, who pursues the "Man in Black" in an alternate-reality universe that is a cross between J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth and the American wild west as depicted by Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone in their spaghetti westerns. The first of these stories, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, was first published in five installments by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the editorship of Edward L. Ferman, beginning in 1977 and the last in 1981. The Gunslinger was continued as a large 7-book epic called The Dark Tower, which were written and published infrequently over four decades.

In 1982, the fantasy small-press Donald M. Grant (known for publishing the entire canon of Robert E. Howard) printed these stories for the first time together in hardcover form with color and black-and-white illustrations by fantasy artist Michael Whelan, as The Gunslinger. Each chapter was named for the story previously published in magazine form. King dedicated the hardcover edition to his editor at F&SF, Ed Ferman, who "took a chance on these stories". The original print-run was only 10,000 copies, which was, by this time, a comparatively low run for a first printing of a King novel in hardcover. His 1980 novel, Firestarter, had an initial print-run in trade hardcover at 100,000 copies, and his 1983 novel, Christine, had a trade hardcover print-run of 250,000 copies, both by the much larger publisher Viking. The Gunslinger's initial release was not highly publicized, and only specialty science-fiction and related bookstores carried it on their shelves. The book was generally not available in the larger chain stores, except by special order. Rumors spread among avid fans that there was a King book out that few readers knew about, let alone had actually read. When the initial 10,000 copies sold out, Grant printed another 10,000 copies in 1984, but these runs were still far short of the growing demand among fans for this book. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger was the beginning of his magnum opus fantasy epic. Both the first and second printings of The Gunslinger garner premium prices on the collectible book market, notably among avid readers and collectors of Stephen King, horror literature, fantasy literature, American western literature, and fans of the artwork of Michael Whelan.^{[citation needed]}

In 1987, King released the second installment, The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, in which Roland draws three people from 20th-century United States into his world through magical doors. Grant published The Drawing of the Three with illustrations by Phil Hale in a slightly larger run of 30,000 copies, which was still well below King's typical initial hardcover print-run of a new book. (It, published in 1986, had an initial print-run of 1,000,000 copies, King's largest to date.) King had believed that the Dark Tower books would only be of interest to a select group of his fans, and he had resisted releasing it on a larger scale. Finally, in the late 1980s, bowing to pressure from his publishers and fans who were searching for the books (at this point fewer than 50,000 of his millions of readers would have been able to own any of the Dark Tower books), King agreed to release The Gunslinger and all subsequent Dark Tower books in trade paperback and mass market formats.^{[citation needed]}

In the early 2000s King revised the original book, The Gunslinger, because he felt the voice and imagery of the original stories of the late 1970s did not seem to fit the voice of the final installment of 2004. King felt the style of the work had markedly changed during the intervening 27 years. The revised version was published in 2003 by his former hardcover publisher Viking. Grant published its hardcover limited edition of the revised version of The Gunslinger along with a prequel story set in the Dark Tower world called "The Little Sisters of Eluria" (originally published in 1998 in the collection Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy) in 2009.

Adaptations[link]

In October 2005, King signed a deal with Marvel Comics to publish a seven-issue, miniseries spin-off of the series called The Gunslinger Born. The series, which focuses on a young Roland Deschain, is plotted by Robin Furth, with dialogue by Peter David, and illustrated by Eisner Award-winning artist Jae Lee. The first issue was published on February 7, 2007, and King, David, Lee and Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada appeared at a midnight signing at a Times Square, New York comic book store to promote it.^[25][26] The work had sold over 200,000 copies by March 2007. The success of The Gunslinger Born led to an ongoing series of miniseries published by Marvel, with Furth and David continuing to collaborate, featuring both adapted material from the Dark Tower books and new material approved by King; it also led to a second series of King adaptations in the same format, serializing the events of The Stand.

Although The Hollywood Reporter announced in February 2007 that plans were underway for Lost co-creator J. J. Abrams to do an adaptation of King's epic Dark Tower series,^[5] Abrams stated in a November 2009 interview with MTV that he would not be adapting the series.^[27]

Akiva Goldsman, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer will produce a feature film based on The Dark Tower series, with Howard slated to direct.^{[citation needed]}

Richard Bachman[link]

In the late 1970s-early 1980s, King published a handful of short novels—Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), The Running Man (1982) and Thinner (1984)—under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The idea behind this was to test whether he could replicate his success again and to his fears that his popularity was an accident. An alternate explanation was that publishing standards at the time allowed only a single book a year.^[28] He picked up the name from the hard rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive, of which he is a fan.^[29]

Richard Bachman was exposed as King's pseudonym by a persistent Washington D.C. bookstore clerk, Steve Brown, who noticed similarities between the works and later located publisher's records at the Library of Congress that named King as the author of one of Bachman's novels.^[30] This led to a press release heralding Bachman's "death"—supposedly from "cancer of the pseudonym."^[31] King dedicated his 1989 book The Dark Half, about a pseudonym turning on a writer, to "the deceased Richard Bachman", and in 1996, when the Stephen King novel Desperation was released, the companion novel The Regulators carried the "Bachman" byline.

In 2006, during a press conference in London, King declared that he had discovered another Bachman novel, titled Blaze. It was published on June 12, 2007. In fact, the original manuscript had been held at King's alma mater, the University of Maine in Orono, for many years and had been covered by numerous King experts. King completely rewrote the original 1973 manuscript for its publication.^{[citation needed]}

King has used other pseudonyms, such as John Swithen for The Fifth Quarter.^{[citation needed]}

Car accident and thoughts of retirement[link]

On June 19, 1999 at about 4:30 p.m., King was walking on the shoulder of Route 5, in Lovell, Maine. Driver Bryan Smith, distracted by an unrestrained dog moving in the back of his minivan, struck King, who landed in a depression in the ground about 14 feet from the pavement of Route 5.^[15] According to Oxford County Sheriff deputy Matt Baker, King was hit from behind and some witnesses said the driver was not speeding, reckless, or drinking.^[32]

King was conscious enough to give the deputy phone numbers to contact his family but was in considerable pain. The author was first transported to Northern Cumberland Hospital in Bridgton and then flown by helicopter to Central Maine Medical Center, in Lewiston. His injuries—a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, scalp laceration and a broken hip—kept him at CMMC until July 9. His leg bones were so shattered doctors initially considered amputating his leg, but stabilized the bones in the leg with an external fixator.^[33] After five operations in ten days and physical therapy, King resumed work on On Writing in July, though his hip was still shattered and he could only sit for about forty minutes before the pain became worse. Soon it became nearly unbearable.^[34]

King's lawyer and two others purchased Smith's van for $1,500, reportedly to prevent it from appearing on eBay. The van was later crushed at a junkyard, much to King's disappointment, as he dreamed of beating it with a baseball bat once his leg was healed. King later mentioned during an interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he wanted to completely destroy the vehicle himself with a pickaxe.^[35]

During this time, Tabitha King was inspired to redesign his studio. King visited the space while his books and belongings were packed away. What he saw was an image of what his studio would look like if he died, providing a seed for his novel Lisey's Story.^[36]

In 2002, King announced he would stop writing, apparently motivated in part by frustration with his injuries, which had made sitting uncomfortable and reduced his stamina. He has since resumed writing, but states on his website that:

"I'm writing but I'm writing at a much slower pace than previously and I think that if I come up with something really, really good, I would be perfectly willing to publish it because that still feels like the final act of the creative process, publishing it so people can read it and you can get feedback and people can talk about it with each other and with you, the writer, but the force of my invention has slowed down a lot over the years and that's as it should be."^[37]

2000s work[link]

In 2000, King published a serialized novel, The Plant, online, bypassing print publication. At first it was presumed by the public that King had abandoned the project because sales were unsuccessful, but he later stated that he had simply run out of stories.^[38] The unfinished epistolary novel is still available from King's official site, now free. Also in 2000, he wrote a digital novella, Riding the Bullet, and has said he sees e-books becoming 50% of the market "probably by 2013 and maybe by 2012." But he also warns: "Here's the thing—people tire of the new toys quickly."^[39]

In August 2003 King began writing a column on pop culture appearing in Entertainment Weekly, usually every third week. The column is called "The Pop of King", a play on the nickname "The King of Pop" commonly given to Michael Jackson.^[40]

In 2006, King published an apocalyptic novel, Cell. The book features a sudden force in which every cell phone user turns into a mindless killer. King noted in the book's introduction that he does not use cell phones.

In 2007, Marvel Comics began publishing comic books based on King's Dark Tower series, followed by adaptations of The Stand in 2008 and The Talisman in 2009.

In 2008, King published both a novel, Duma Key, and a collection, Just After Sunset. The latter featured 13 short stories, including a novella, N., which was later released as a serialized animated series that could be seen for free, or, for a small fee, could be downloaded in a higher quality; it then was adopted into a limited comic book series.

In 2009, King published Ur, a novella written exclusively for the launch of the second-generation Amazon Kindle and available only on Amazon.com, and Throttle, a novella co-written with his son Joe Hill, which later was released as an audiobook Road Rage, which included Richard Matheson's short story "Duel". On November 10 that year, King's novel, Under the Dome, was published. It is a reworking of an unfinished novel he tried writing twice in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and at 1,074 pages, it is the largest novel he has written since 1986's It. It debuted at #1 in The New York Times Bestseller List.^[41]

2010s work[link]

On February 16, 2010, King announced on his website that his next book will be a collection of four previously unpublished novellas. The book is called Full Dark, No Stars. In April of that year, King published Blockade Billy, an original novella issued first by independent small press Cemetery Dance Publications and later released in mass market paperback by Simon & Schuster. The following month, DC Comics premiered American Vampire, a monthly comic book series written by King with short story writer Scott Snyder, and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque, which represents King's first original comics work.^[42][43][44]

King's next novel, 11/22/63, was published November 8, 2011,^[45][46] and the eighth Dark Tower volume, The Wind Through the Keyhole, was published in 2012.^[47] King's next novel is the upcoming sequel to The Shining (1977), titled Dr. Sleep, scheduled to be published in 2013, and King is currently working on Joyland, a novel about "an amusement-park serial killer", according to an article in The Sunday Times published on April 8, 2012.^[48]

Collaborations[link]

King has written two novels with acclaimed horror novelist Peter Straub: The Talisman and a sequel, Black House. King has indicated that he and Straub will likely write the third and concluding book in this series, the tale of Jack Sawyer, but has set no time for its completion.

King also wrote the nonfiction book, Faithful, with novelist and fellow Red Sox fanatic Stewart O'Nan.

In 1996 King collaborated with Michael Jackson to create Ghosts, a 40-minute musical video in which the singer portrays a recluse living in a mansion confronting an unwelcoming group of townsfolk initially calling for his exodus from their community.

"Throttle", a novella written in collaboration with his son Joe Hill, appears in the anthology He Is Legend: Celebrating Richard Matheson, (Gauntlet Press, 2009).^[49]

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red, was a paperback tie-in for the King-penned miniseries Rose Red. The book was published under anonymous authorship, and written by Ridley Pearson. This spin-off is a rare occasion of another author being granted permission to write commercial work using characters and story elements invented by King.

King wrote a musical play with John Mellencamp titled Ghost Brothers of Darkland County.

King played guitar for the rock band Rock-Bottom Remainders, several of whose members are authors. Other members include Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Amy Tan, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount, Jr., Matt Groening, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Sam Barry, and Greg Iles. None of them claim to have any musical talent.^{[citation needed]} King is a fan of the rock band AC/DC,^{[citation needed]} who did the soundtrack for his 1986 film, Maximum Overdrive. He is also a fan of The Ramones,^{[citation needed]} who wrote the title song for Pet Sematary and appeared in the music video. King referred to the band several times in various novels and stories^{[citation needed]} and The Ramones referenced King on the song "It's Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)", which is on 1981's Pleasant Dreams. In addition he wrote the liner notes for their tribute album We're a Happy Family. In 1988, the band Blue Öyster Cult recorded an updated version of their 1974 song "Astronomy". The single released for radio play featured a narrative intro spoken by King.^[50]

On Sunday, October 25, 2009 the DC Comics/Vertigo announced King's collaboration with short story writer Scott Snyder and artist Rafael Albuquerque for the monthly Vertigo comic book series American Vampire, which debuted in March 2010.^[42] King wrote the background history of the very first American vampire, Skinner Sweet, in the first five -issues story arc. Scott Snyder wrote the story of Pearl.^[51]

In 2010, King collaborated with musician Shooter Jennings and his band Hierophant, providing the narration for their most recent album, Black Ribbons.

Analysis[link]

Writing style[link]

King's formula for learning to write well is: "Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer." He sets out each day with a quota of 2000 words and will not stop writing until it is met. He also has a simple definition for talent in writing: "If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."^[52]

Shortly after his accident, King wrote the first draft of the book Dreamcatcher with a notebook and a Waterman fountain pen, which he called "the world's finest word processor."^[53]

When asked why he writes, King responds: "The answer to that is fairly simple—there was nothing else I was made to do. I was made to write stories and I love to write stories. That's why I do it. I really can't imagine doing anything else and I can't imagine not doing what I do."^[54] He is also often asked why he writes such terrifying stories and he answers with another question: "Why do you assume I have a choice?"^[55]

King often uses authors as characters, or includes mention of fictional books in his stories, novellas and novels, such as Paul Sheldon who is the main character in Misery and Jack Torrance in The Shining. See also List of fictional books in the works of Stephen King for a complete list. In September 2009 it was announced he would serve as a writer for Fangoria.^[56]

Influences[link]

King has called Richard Matheson "the author who influenced me most as a writer."^[15] Both authors casually integrate characters' thoughts into the third person narration, just one of several parallels between their writing styles. In a current edition of Matheson's The Shrinking Man, King is quoted: "A horror story if there ever was one...a great adventure story—it is certainly one of that select handful that I have given to people, envying them the experience of the first reading."

King refers to H. P. Lovecraft several times in Danse Macabre. "Gramma", a short story made into a film in the 1980s anthology horror show The New Twilight Zone, mentions Lovecraft's notorious fictional creation Necronomicon, also borrowing the names of a number of the fictional monsters mentioned therein. "I Know What You Need" from the 1976 collection Night Shift, and 'Salem's Lot also mention the tome. In On Writing, King is critical of Lovecraft's dialogue-writing skills, using passages from The Colour Out of Space as particularly poor examples. There are also several examples of King referring to Lovecraftian characters in his work, such as Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth.

King acknowledges the influence of Bram Stoker, particularly on his novel 'Salem's Lot, which he envisioned as a retelling of Dracula.^[57] Its related short story "Jerusalem's Lot", is reminiscent of Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm.^{[citation needed]}

King has also referenced author Shirley Jackson. 'Salem's Lot opens with a quotation from Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and a character in Wolves of the Calla references the Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

King is a fan of John D. MacDonald, and dedicated the novella "Sun Dog" to MacDonald, saying "I miss you, old friend." For his part, MacDonald wrote an admiring preface to Night Shift, and even had his famous character, Travis McGee, reading Cujo in one of the last McGee novels and Pet Sematary in the last McGee novel, The Lonely Silver Rain.

In 1987 King's Philtrum Press published Don Robertson's novel, The Ideal, Genuine Man. In his forenote to the novel, King wrote, "Don Robertson was and is one of the three writers who influenced me as a young man who was trying to 'become' a novelist (the other two being Richard Matheson and John D. MacDonald)."^[58]

Robert A. Heinlein's book The Door into Summer is repeatedly mentioned in King's Wolves of the Calla.

In an interview with King, Published in the USA Weekend in March 2009, the author stated, "People look on writers that they like as an irreplaceable resource. I do. Elmore Leonard, every day I wake up and – not to be morbid or anything, although morbid is my life to a degree – don't see his obituary in the paper, I think to myself, "Great! He's probably working somewhere. He's gonna produce another book, and I'll have another book to read." Because when he's gone, there's nobody else."^[59]

King partly dedicated his book Cell to film director George Romero, and wrote an essay for the Elite DVD version of Night of the Living Dead.

Critical response[link]

Although critical reaction to King's work has been mostly positive, he has occasionally come under fire from academic writers.

Science fiction editors John Clute and Peter Nichols^[60] offer a largely favorable appraisal of King, noting his "pungent prose, sharp ear for dialogue, disarmingly laid-back, frank style, along with his passionately fierce denunciation of human stupidity and cruelty (especially to children) [all of which rank] him among the more distinguished 'popular' writers."

In his analysis of post-World War II horror fiction, The Modern Weird Tale (2001), critic S. T. Joshi^[61] devotes a chapter to King's work. Joshi argues that King's best-known works (his supernatural novels), are his worst, describing them as mostly bloated, illogical, maudlin and prone to deus ex machina endings. Despite these criticisms, Joshi argues that since Gerald's Game (1993), King has been tempering the worst of his writing faults, producing books that are leaner, more believable and generally better written. Joshi suggests that King's strengths as a writer include the accessible "everyman" quality of his prose, and his unfailingly insightful observations about the pains and joys of adolescence. Joshi cites two early non-supernatural novels—Rage (1977) and The Running Man (1982)—as King's best, suggesting both are riveting and well-constructed suspense thrillers, with believable characters.

In 1996, King won an O. Henry Award for his short story "The Man in the Black Suit".^[62]

In his short story collection A Century of Great Suspense Stories, editor Jeffrey Deaver noted that King “singlehandedly made popular fiction grow up. While there were many good best-selling writers before him, King, more than anybody since John D. MacDonald, brought reality to genre novels. He’s often remarked that 'Salem's Lot was “Peyton Place meets Dracula.” And so it was. The rich characterization, the careful and caring social eye, the interplay of story line and character development announced that writers could take worn themes such as vampirism and make them fresh again. Before King, many popular writers found their efforts to make their books serious blue-penciled by their editors. ‘Stuff like that gets in the way of the story,’ they were told. Well, it’s stuff like that that has made King so popular, and helped free the popular name from the shackles of simple genre writing. He is a master of masters.”^[63]

In 2003, King was honored by the National Book Awards with a lifetime achievement award, the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, with his work being described thus:

Stephen King’s writing is securely rooted in the great American tradition that glorifies spirit-of-place and the abiding power of narrative. He crafts stylish, mind-bending page-turners that contain profound moral truths–some beautiful, some harrowing–about our inner lives. This Award commemorates Mr. King’s well-earned place of distinction in the wide world of readers and book lovers of all ages.

Some in the literary community expressed disapproval of the award: Richard Snyder, the former CEO of Simon & Schuster, described King's work as "non-literature", and critic Harold Bloom denounced the choice:

The decision to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.^[64]

However, others came to King's defense, such as writer Orson Scott Card, who responded:

Let me assure you that King's work most definitely is literature, because it was written to be published and is read with admiration. What Snyder really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite."^[65]

In Roger Ebert's review of the 2004 movie Secret Window, he stated, "A lot of people were outraged that [King] was honored at the National Book Awards, as if a popular writer could not be taken seriously. But after finding that his book On Writing had more useful and observant things to say about the craft than any book since Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, I have gotten over my own snobbery."^[66]

In 2008, King's book On Writing was ranked 21st on Entertainment Weekly list of "The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008".^[67]

Appearances and adaptations in other media[link]

King and his wife Tabitha own Zone Radio Corp, a radio station group consisting of WZON 103.1 FM and 620 AM.^[68]

King has stated that his favorite book-to-film adaptations are Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Mist.^[69]

King's first film appearance was in George Romero's Knightriders as a buffoonish audience member. His first featured role was in Creepshow, playing Jordy Verrill, a backwoods redneck who, after touching a fallen meteorite in hopes of selling it, grows moss all over his body. He has since made cameos in several adaptations of his works. He appeared in Pet Sematary as a minister at a funeral, in Thinner as a pharmacist, in Rose Red as a pizza deliveryman, as a news reporter in The Storm of the Century, in The Stand as "Teddy Wieszack," in the Shining miniseries as a band member, in The Langoliers as Tom Holby and in Sleepwalkers as the cemetery caretaker. He has also appeared in The Golden Years, in Chappelle's Show and, along with fellow author Amy Tan, on The Simpsons as himself. In addition to acting, King tried his hand at directing with Maximum Overdrive, in which he also made a cameo appearance as a man using an ATM that is on the fritz.

King produced and acted in a miniseries, Kingdom Hospital, which is based on the Danish miniseries Riget by Lars von Trier. He also co-wrote The X-Files season 5 episode "Chinga" with the creator of the series Chris Carter.

King made an appearance as a contestant on Celebrity Jeopardy! in 1995, playing to benefit the Bangor Public Library.

King provided the voice of Abraham Lincoln in the audiobook version of Assassination Vacation.

In 2010, King appeared in a cameo role as a cleaner named Bachman (a reference to his pen name Richard Bachman) on the FX series Sons of Anarchy.^[70]

The Syfy TV series Haven is based on King's novella, The Colorado Kid.^[71]

Political activism[link]

In April 2008, King spoke out against HB 1423, a bill pending in the Massachusetts state legislature that would restrict or ban the sale of violent video games to anyone under the age of 18. Although King stated that he had no personal interest in video games as a hobby, he criticized the proposed law, which he sees as an attempt by politicians to scapegoat pop culture, and to act as surrogate parents to others' children, which he asserted is usually "disastrous" and "undemocratic". He also saw the law as inconsistent, as it would forbid a 17-year-old, legally able to see Hostel: Part II, from buying or renting Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is violent but less graphic. While conceding that he saw no artistic merit in some violent video games, King also opined that such games reflect the violence that already exists in society, which would not be lessened by such a law, and would be redundant in light of the ratings system that already exists for video games. King argued that such laws allow legislators to ignore the economic divide between the rich and poor, and the easy availability of guns, which he felt were the more legitimate causes of violence.^[72] Regarding video games, he later stated that he enjoys playing light gun shooter arcade games such as Time Crisis.^[73]

A controversy emerged on May 5, 2008, when a conservative blogger posted a clip of King at a Library of Congress reading event. King, talking to high-school students, had said: "If you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that."^[74] The comment was described by the blog as "another in a long line of liberal media members bashing the military," and likened to John Kerry's similar remark from 2006.^[75] King responded later that day, saying, "That a right-wing-blog would impugn my patriotism because I said children should learn to read, and could get better jobs by doing so, is beneath contempt...I live in a national guard town, and I support our troops, but I don’t support either the war or educational policies that limit the options of young men and women to any one career—military or otherwise." King again defended his comment in an interview with the Bangor Daily News on May 8, saying, "I’m not going to apologize for promoting that kids get better education in high school, so they have more options. Those that don’t agree with what I’m saying, I’m not going to change their minds."^[76]

King's website states that he is a supporter of the Democratic Party. During the 2008 presidential election, King voiced his support for Democratic candidate Barack Obama.^[77] King was quoted as calling conservative commentator Glenn Beck "Satan's mentally challenged younger brother."^[78]

On March 8, 2011, King spoke at a political rally in Sarasota aimed against Governor Rick Scott (R-FL), voicing his opposition to the Tea Party movement.^[79]

In November 2011, King donated $70,000 in matched funding via his radio station to help pay the heating bills for families in need in his home town of Bangor, Maine, during the winter.^[80]

On April 30, 2012, King published an article in The Daily Beast calling for rich Americans, including himself, to pay more taxes, citing it as "a practical necessity and moral imperative that those who have received much should be obligated to pay ... in the same proportion".^[81]

Personal life[link]

King's home in Bangor

King and his wife own and occupy three different houses, one in Bangor, one in Lovell, Maine, and they regularly winter in their waterfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico, in Sarasota, Florida. He and Tabitha have three children, Naomi, Joe and Owen, and three grandchildren.^[12]

Shortly after publication of The Tommyknockers, King's family and friends staged an intervention, dumping evidence of his addictions taken from the trash including beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil, dextromethorphan (cough medicine) and marijuana, on the rug in front of him. As King related in his memoir, he then sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since.^[15]

Tabitha King has published nine of her own novels. Both King's sons are published authors: Owen King published his first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, in 2005. Joseph Hillstrom King, who writes under the professional name Joe Hill, published a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, in 2005. His debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box, was published in 2007 and will be adapted into a feature film by director Neil Jordan.^[82] King's daughter Naomi is a Unitarian Universalist Church minister in Plantation, Florida with her same-sex partner, Rev. Dr. Thandeka.^[83]

King is a fan of baseball, and of the Boston Red Sox in particular; he frequently attends the team's home and away games, and occasionally mentions the team in his novels and stories. He helped coach his son Owen's Bangor West team to the Maine Little League Championship in 1989. He recounts this experience in the New Yorker essay "Head Down", which also appears in the collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes. In 1999, King wrote The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which featured former Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon as the protagonist's imaginary companion. In 2004, King co-wrote a book titled Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season with Stewart O'Nan, recounting the authors' roller coaster reaction to the Red Sox's 2004 season, a season culminating in the Sox winning the 2004 American League Championship Series and World Series.^[84] In the 2005 film Fever Pitch, about an obsessive Boston Red Sox fan, King tosses out the first pitch of the Sox's opening day game.

Awards[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (October 2010)

See also[link]

Bibliography Short fiction by Stephen King Stephen King bibliography Unpublished and uncollected works by Stephen King Family Joseph Hillstrom King Naomi King Owen King Tabitha King

King's fictional topography Castle Rock, Maine Derry, Maine Jerusalem's Lot, Maine Projects Dollar Baby Rock Bottom Remainders

Publishers Cemetery Dance Publications Scribner Doubleday Grant Philtrum Press Viking Press Derivative works Media based on Stephen King works

Book: Stephen King Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

References[link]

Additional reading[link]

• Brooks, Justin (2008). Stephen King: A Primary Bibliography of the World's Most Popular Author. Cemetery Dance. ISBN 1-58767-153-0. 
• Collings, Michael R. (1985). The Many Facets of Stephen King. Starmont House. ISBN 0-930261-14-3. 
• Collings, Michael R.; David A. Engebretson (1985). The Shorter Works of Stephen King. Starmont House. ISBN 0-930261-02-X. 
• Collings, Michael R. (1985). Stephen King as Richard Bachman. Starmont House. ISBN 0-930261-00-3. 
• Collings, Michael R. (1986). The Annotated Guide to Stephen King: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography of the Works of America’s Premier Horror Writer. Starmont House. ISBN 0-930261-80-1. 
• Collings, Michael R. (1986). The Films of Stephen King. Starmont House. ISBN 0-930261-10-0. 
• Collings, Michael R. (1987). The Stephen King Phenomenon. Starmont House. ISBN 0-930261-12-7. 
• Collings, Michael R. (2003). Horror Plum'd: An International Stephen King Bibliography and Guide 1960-2000. Overlook Connection Press. ISBN -892950-45-6. 
• Spignesi, Stephen (1991). The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia. Contemporary Books. ISBN 978-0-8092-3818-7. 
• Spignesi, Stephen (1998). The Lost Work of Stephen King. Birch Lane Press. ISBN 978-1-55972-469-2. 
• Spignesi, Stephen (2001). The Essential Stephen King. Career Press. ISBN ISBN 978-1-56414-710-3. 
• Wood, Rocky; David Rawsthorne, Norma Blackburn. The Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King,. Kanrock Partners,. ISBN 0-9750593-3-5. 
• Wood, Rocky (2006). Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished. Cemetery Dance. ISBN 1-58767-130-1. 
• Wood, Rocky; Justin Brooks. The Stephen King Collector's Guide. Kanrock Partners. ISBN 978-0-9750593-5-7. 
• Wood, Rocky; Justin Brooks (2008). Stephen King: The Non-Fiction. Cemetery Dance. ISBN 1-58767-160-3. 
• Collings, Michael R. (2008). Stephen King Is Richard Bachman. Overlook Connection Press. ISBN 1-892950-74-X. 
• Gary Hoppenstand, ed. (2010). Stephen King. Salem Press. ISBN 978-1-58765-685-9. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Stephen King

• Stephen King's Official Web Site
• Official Website for Carrie the Musical
• Stephen & Tabitha King Foundation
• Christopher Lehmann-Haupt and Nathaniel Rich (Fall 2006). "Stephen King, The Art of Fiction No. 189". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5653/the-art-of-fiction-no-189-stephen-king. 
• Working with the King - Shotsmag Ezine Interview with Philippa Pride, King's UK editor
• La Torre Nera – Stephen King Italian/English Website
• Club Stephen King French English Website
• Video of a March 2008 interview with King in Sarasota, Fla.
• German web site
• Stephen King quotes...everyday
• Works by or about Stephen King in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Stephen King at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Stephen King at the Internet Book List
• Stephen King at the Internet Movie Database

v t e Works of Stephen King Novels Carrie (1974) 'Salem's Lot (1975) The Shining (1977) The Stand (1978) The Dead Zone (1979) Firestarter (1980) Cujo (1981) Christine (1983) Pet Sematary (1983) Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) The Talisman (1984; with Peter Straub) It (1986) The Eyes of the Dragon (1987) Misery (1987) The Tommyknockers (1987) The Dark Half (1989) Needful Things (1991) Gerald's Game (1992) Dolores Claiborne (1992) Insomnia (1994) Rose Madder (1995) The Green Mile (1996) Desperation (1996) Bag of Bones (1998) The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999) Dreamcatcher (2001) Black House (2001; with Peter Straub) From a Buick 8 (2002) The Colorado Kid (2005) Cell (2006) Lisey's Story (2006) Duma Key (2008) Under the Dome (2009) Blockade Billy (2010) 11/22/63 (2011) Doctor Sleep (2013) Joyland (2013) The Dark Tower series The Gunslinger (1982) The Drawing of the Three (1987) The Waste Lands (1991) Wizard and Glass (1997) Wolves of the Calla (2003) Song of Susannah (2004) The Dark Tower (2004) The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012) Richard Bachman novels Rage (1977) The Long Walk (1979) Roadwork (1981) The Running Man (1982) Thinner (1984) The Bachman Books (1985) The Regulators (1996) Blaze (2007) Short fiction collections Night Shift (1978) Different Seasons (1982) Skeleton Crew (1985) Four Past Midnight (1990) Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993) Hearts in Atlantis (1999) Everything's Eventual (2002) Just After Sunset (2008) Full Dark, No Stars (2010) Non-fiction Danse Macabre (1981) Nightmares in the Sky (1988) On Writing (2000) Secret Windows (2000) Faithful (2004; with Stewart O'Nan) E-books Riding the Bullet (2000) The Plant (2000; unfinished) Ur (2009) Mile 81 (2011) Screenplays Creepshow (1982) Cat's Eye (1985) Silver Bullet (1985) Maximum Overdrive (1986; also director) Pet Sematary (1989) Sleepwalkers (1992) Cell (2012) Teleplays Sorry, Right Number (1988) Golden Years (1991) The Stand (1994) The Shining (1997) "Chinga" (1998; with Chris Carter) Storm of the Century (1999) Rose Red (2002) Kingdom Hospital (2004) Desperation (2006) Collaborations with musicians Michael Jackson's Ghosts (1997; with Michael Jackson) Black Ribbons (2010; with Shooter Jennings) Ghost Brothers of Darkland County (2012; with John Mellencamp) Graphic novels Creepshow (1982) The Dark Tower (2007-Present) The Stand (2008-2012) The Talisman (2009-2010) American Vampire (2010) N. (2010) Road Rage (2012) Related articles Unpublished and uncollected works by Stephen King Media based on Stephen King works Books about Stephen King Tabitha King Naomi King Joe Hill Owen King Peter Straub Rock Bottom Remainders Dollar Baby Jerusalem's Lot Castle Rock, Maine Derry, Maine The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red Book:Stephen King

Related topics v t e Media based on Stephen King works Films Individual films The Shining (1980) Cujo (1983) The Dead Zone (1983) Christine (1983) Cat's Eye (1985) Silver Bullet (1985) Stand by Me (1986) The Running Man (1987) Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990) Graveyard Shift (1990) Misery (1990) Sleepwalkers (1992) The Dark Half (1993) Needful Things (1993) The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Dolores Claiborne (1995) Thinner (1996) The Night Flier (1997) Apt Pupil (1998) The Green Mile (1999) Hearts in Atlantis (2001) Dreamcatcher (2003) Secret Window (2004) Riding the Bullet (2004) 1408 (2007) The Mist (2007) Dolan's Cadillac (2009) Film series Carrie Carrie (1976) The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999) Carrie (2002) Carrie (TBA) Creepshow Creepshow (1982) Creepshow 2 (1987) Children of the Corn Children of the Corn (1984) The Final Sacrifice (1993) Urban Harvest (1995) The Gathering (1996) Fields of Terror (1998) Isaac's Return (1999) Revelation (2001) Children of the Corn (2009) Firestarter Firestarter (1984) Rekindled (2002) Trucks Maximum Overdrive (1986) Trucks (1997) Pet Sematary Pet Sematary (1989) Pet Sematary Two (1992) The Lawnmower Man The Lawnmower Man (1992) Beyond Cyberspace (1996) The Mangler The Mangler (1995) The Mangler 2 (2001) The Mangler Reborn (2005) Television Single films or miniseries Gramma (1986) Sorry, Right Number (1987) It (1990) Golden Years (1991) The Tommyknockers (1993) The Stand (1994) The Langoliers (1995) The Shining (1997) Quicksilver Highway (1997) The Revelations of Becka Paulson (1997) Storm of the Century (1999) Kingdom Hospital (2004) Stephen King's Desperation (2006) Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King (2006) Bag of Bones (2011) Multiple films or miniseries Salem's Lot Salem's Lot (1979) A Return to Salem's Lot (1987) 'Salem's Lot (2004) Sometimes They Come Back Sometimes They Come Back (1991) Sometimes They Come Back... Again (1996) Sometimes They Come Back… for More (1998) Rose Red Rose Red (2002) The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer (2003) Series The Dead Zone (2002–2007) Haven (2010–present) Book v t e World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement 1975–1979 Robert Bloch (1975) Fritz Leiber (1976) Ray Bradbury (1977) Frank Belknap Long (1978) Jorge Luis Borges (1979) 1980–1989 Manly Wade Wellman (1980) C. L. Moore (1981) Italo Calvino (1982) Roald Dahl (1983) L. Sprague de Camp Richard Matheson E. Hoffmann Price Jack Vance Donald Wandrei (1984) Theodore Sturgeon (1985) Avram Davidson (1986) Jack Finney (1987) Everett F. Bleiler (1988) Evangeline Walton (1989) 1990–1999 R. A. Lafferty (1990) Ray Russell (1991) Edd Cartier (1992) Harlan Ellison (1993) Jack Williamson (1994) Ursula K. Le Guin (1995) Gene Wolfe (1996) Madeleine L'Engle (1997) Edward L. Ferman Andre Norton (1998) Hugh B. Cave (1999) 2000–2009 Marion Zimmer Bradley Michael Moorcock (2000) Frank Frazetta Philip José Farmer (2001) Forrest J Ackerman George H. Scithers (2002) Lloyd Alexander Donald M. Grant (2003) Stephen King Gahan Wilson (2004) Tom Doherty Carol Emshwiller (2005) John Crowley Stephen Fabian (2006) Betty Ballantine Diana Wynne Jones (2007) Leo and Diane Dillon Patricia A. McKillip (2008) Ellen Asher Jane Yolen (2009) 2010–present Brian Lumley Terry Pratchett Peter Straub (2010) v t e World Fantasy Convention Award Glenn Lord (1978) Kirby McCauley (1979) Stephen King (1980) Gahan Wilson (1981) Roy Krenkel Joseph Payne Brennan (1982) Arkham House (1983) Donald M. Grant (1984) Evangeline Walton (1985) Donald A. Wollheim (1986) Andre Norton (1987) Hugh B. Cave (1997)

Richard Dawkins
Dawkins in 2010 at Cooper Union in New York City
Born	Clinton Richard Dawkins (1941-03-26) 26 March 1941 (age 71) Nairobi, Kenya Colony
Nationality	British
Education	MA, DPhil (Oxon)
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Occupation	Ethologist
Years active	1967–present
Employer	University of California, Berkeley University of Oxford
Organization	Fellow of the Royal Society Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Known for	Gene-centered view of evolution, concept of the meme, as well as advocacy of atheism and science.
Notable work(s)	The Selfish Gene (1976) The Extended Phenotype (1982) The Blind Watchmaker (1986) The God Delusion (2006)
Influenced by	Charles Darwin, Ronald Fisher, George C. Williams, W. D. Hamilton, Daniel Dennett, Bertrand Russell, Nikolaas Tinbergen, John Maynard Smith, Robert Trivers
Spouse	Marian Stamp Dawkins (m. 1967–1984) Eve Barham (m. 1984–?) Lalla Ward (m. 1992–present)
Children	Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984)
Parents	Clinton John Dawkins Jean Mary Vyvyan (née Ladner)
Awards	ZSL Silver Medal (1989) Faraday Award (1990) Kistler Prize (2001)
Website
The Richard Dawkins Foundation

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941), known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford,^[1] and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.^[2]

Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982 he introduced an influential concept into evolutionary biology, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms.^[3]

Dawkins is an atheist, a vice president of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement.^[4] He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—"a fixed false belief."^[5] As of January 2010 the English-language version has sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages.^[6]

Biography[link]

Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya.^[7] His father, Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010),^[8] was an agricultural civil servant in the British colonial service, in Nyasaland (now Malawi). Dawkins has a younger sister.^[9] His father was called up into the King's African Rifles during World War II,^[10][11] returning to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. His father had inherited a country estate, Over Norton Park, which he turned into a commercial farm.^[8] Both his parents were interested in natural sciences; they answered Dawkins' questions in scientific terms.^[12]

Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing".^[13] He was confirmed, and embraced Christianity until his mid-teens, at which point he concluded that the theory of evolution was a better explanation for life's complexity, and ceased believing in a god.^[9] Dawkins states: "the main residual reason why I was religious was from being so impressed with the complexity of life and feeling that it had to have a designer, and I think it was when I realised that Darwinism was a far superior explanation that pulled the rug out from under the argument of design. And that left me with nothing."^[9]

He attended Oundle, a Church of England school,^[9] from 1954 to 1959. He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was tutored by Nobel Prize–winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, graduating in 1962. He continued as a research student under Tinbergen's supervision, receiving his M.A. and D.Phil. degrees by 1966, and remained a research assistant for another year.^[7] Tinbergen was a pioneer in the study of animal behaviour, particularly in the areas of instinct, learning and choice.^[14] Dawkins' research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making.^[15]

From 1967 to 1969, he was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became heavily involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities.^[16] He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 taking a position as a lecturer, and in 1990, as a reader in zoology. In 1995 he was appointed Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field",^[17] and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.^[18]

Since 1970 he has been a fellow of New College.^[19] He has delivered a number of inaugural and other lectures, including the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), T. H. Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), Sheldon Doyle Lecture (1999), Tinbergen Lecture (2004) and Tanner Lectures (2003).^[7] In 1991 he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children. He has also served as editor of a number of journals, and has acted as editorial advisor to the Encarta Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Evolution. He is a senior editor of the Council for Secular Humanism's Free Inquiry magazine, for which he also writes a column. He has been a member of the editorial board of Skeptic magazine since its foundation.^[20]

He has sat on judging panels for awards as diverse as the Royal Society's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards,^[7] and has been president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2004 Balliol College, Oxford instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities".^[21] In September 2008, he retired from his professorship, announcing plans to "write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in 'anti-scientific' fairytales."^[22]

Personal life[link]

On 19 August 1967, Dawkins married fellow ethologist Marian Stamp in Annestown, County Waterford, Ireland;^[23] they divorced in 1984. Later that same year, on 1 June, he married Eve Barham (19 August 1951^[24]–28 February 1999) in Oxford. They had a daughter, Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984, Oxford).^[24] Dawkins and Barham also divorced^[25] and she later died of cancer.^[26][27] In 1992 he married actress Lalla Ward^[25] in Kensington and Chelsea, London.^[24] Dawkins met her through their mutual friend Douglas Adams,^[28] who had worked with her on the BBC's Doctor Who.

Work[link]

Evolutionary biology[link]

Dawkins at the University of Texas at Austin, March 2008

In his scientific works, Dawkins is best known for his popularisation of the gene-centred view of evolution. This view is most clearly set out in his books The Selfish Gene (1976), where he notes that "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities", and The Extended Phenotype (1982), in which he describes natural selection as "the process whereby replicators out-propagate each other".^[29] In his role as an ethologist, interested in animal behaviour and its relation to natural selection, he advocates the idea that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution.

Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as spandrels, described by Gould and Lewontin)^[30] and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene.^[31] He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as a basis for understanding altruism.^[32] This behaviour appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases one's own fitness. Previously, many had interpreted this as an aspect of group selection: individuals were doing what was best for the survival of the population or species as a whole, and not specifically for themselves. British evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton had used the gene-centred view to explain altruism in terms of inclusive fitness and kin selection − that individuals behave altruistically toward their close relatives, who share many of their own genes.^[33][a] Similarly, Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation.^[34] Dawkins popularised these ideas in The Selfish Gene, and developed them in his own work.^[35]

He has also been strongly critical of the Gaia philosophy theory of the independent scientist James Lovelock.^[36][37][38]

Critics of Dawkins' approach suggest that taking the gene as the unit of selection − of a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce − is misleading, but that the gene could be better described as a unit of evolution − of the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population.^[39] In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams' definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency."^[40] Another common objection is that genes cannot survive alone, but must cooperate to build an individual, and therefore cannot be an independent "unit".^[41] In The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins suggests that because of genetic recombination and sexual reproduction, from an individual gene's viewpoint all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted.

Advocates for higher levels of selection such as Richard Lewontin, David Sloan Wilson, and Elliot Sober suggest that there are many phenomena (including altruism) that gene-based selection cannot satisfactorily explain. The philosopher Mary Midgley, with whom Dawkins clashed in print concerning The Selfish Gene,^[42][43] has criticised gene selection, memetics and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist^[44] and suggests that the popularity of Dawkins' work is due to factors in the Zeitgeist such as the increased individualism of the Thatcher/Reagan decades.^[45]

In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (the so-called 'Darwin Wars'),^[46][47] one faction was often named after Dawkins and its rival after the American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of pertinent ideas.^[48][49] In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, with Dawkins generally approving and Gould generally being critical.^[50] A typical example of Dawkins' position was his scathing review of Not in Our Genes by Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin and Richard C. Lewontin.^[51] Two other thinkers on the subject often considered to be allied to Dawkins are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology.^[52] Despite their academic disagreements, Dawkins and Gould did not have a hostile personal relationship, and Dawkins dedicated a large portion of his 2003 book A Devil's Chaplain posthumously to Gould, who had died the previous year.

Dawkins' book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution expounds the evidence for biological evolution.^[53] All of his previous works dealing with evolution had assumed its truth, and not explicitly provided the evidence to this effect. Dawkins felt that this represented a gap in his oeuvre, and decided to write the book to coincide with Darwin's bicentennial year.^[54]

Meme[link]

Dawkins coined the word meme (the behavioural equivalent of a gene) as a way to encourage readers to think about how Darwinian principles might be extended beyond the realm of genes.^[55] Indeed, it was intended as an extension of his "replicators" argument, but it took on a life of its own in the hands of other authors such as Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. These popularisations then led to the emergence of the field of memetics, from which he has distanced himself.^[56]

Dawkins' memes refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or a complex of ideas. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes are not always copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes, which may themselves prove more, or less, efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes.^[57]

Although Dawkins invented the specific term meme independently, he has not claimed that the idea itself was entirely novel,^[58] and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, John Laurent has suggested that the term may have derived from the work of the little-known German biologist Richard Semon.^[59] In 1904 Semon published Die Mneme (which appeared in English in 1924 as The Mneme). This book discussed the cultural transmission of experiences, with insights parallel to those of Dawkins. Laurent also found the term mneme used in Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the White Ant (1926), and has highlighted the similarities to Dawkins' concept.^[59] Author James Gleick describes Dawkins’ concept of the meme as "his most famous memorable invention, far more influential than his selfish genes or his later proselytizing against religiosity".^[60]

Criticism of creationism[link]

Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism (the religious belief that humanity, life and the universe were created by a deity,^[61] without recourse to evolution^[62]). He has described the Young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood",^[63] and his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, contains a sustained critique of the argument from design, an important creationist argument. In the book, Dawkins argued against the watchmaker analogy made famous by the 18th-century English theologian William Paley in his book Natural Theology. Paley argued that, just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence merely by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Dawkins shares the view generally held by scientists that natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent functionality and non-random complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an automatic, nonintelligent, blind watchmaker.^[64]

Dawkins at the 34th annual conference of American Atheists, 2008

In 1986 Dawkins participated in an Oxford Union debate, in which he and English biologist John Maynard Smith debated Young Earth creationist A. E. Wilder-Smith and Edgar Andrews, president of the Biblical Creation Society.^[b] In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because "what they seek is the oxygen of respectability", and doing so would "give them this oxygen by the mere act of engaging with them at all". He suggests that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public."^[65]

In a December 2004 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers, Dawkins said that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know." When Moyers questioned him on the use of the word theory, Dawkins stated that "evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." He added that "it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English."^[66]

Dawkins has ardently opposed the inclusion of intelligent design in science education, describing it as "not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one".^[67] He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler",^[68] a reference to English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. He has been a strong critic of the British organisation Truth in Science, which promotes the teaching of creationism in state schools, and he plans—through the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science—to subsidise the delivery of books, DVDs and pamphlets to schools, in order to counteract what he has described as an "educational scandal".^[69]

Advocacy of atheism[link]

Dawkins lecturing on his book The God Delusion, 24 June 2006.

Dawkins is an outspoken atheist and a prominent critic of religion. In an interview with Thomas Bass for a book published in 1994 he described himself as a "fairly militant atheist".^[70] In 1996, when asked if he would prefer to be known as a scientist or a militant atheist, he replied "Bertrand Russell called himself the Passionate Sceptic. It's aiming high, but I'll shoot for that."^[71] Dawkins is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society,^[72] a vice-president of the British Humanist Association (since 1996),^[7] a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society of Scotland,^[73] a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board,^[74] a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism,^[75] and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.^[76] In 2003 he became a signatory of the humanist manifesto Humanism and Its Aspirations, published by the American Humanist Association.^[77] As a result of his advocacy of atheism, Dawkins has sometimes been described as a vocal, militant rationalist,^[78][79] and as "the UK's Chief Atheist".^[80]

Dawkins believes that his own atheism is the logical extension of his understanding of evolution^[81] and that religion is largely incompatible with science.^[82] In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins wrote:

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.^[83]

In his 1991 essay "Viruses of the Mind" (from which the term faith-sufferer originated), he suggested that memetic theory might analyse and explain the phenomenon of religious belief and some of the common characteristics of religions, such as the belief that punishment awaits non-believers. According to Dawkins, faith − belief that is not based on evidence − is one of the world's great evils. He claims it to be analogous to the smallpox virus, though more difficult to eradicate.^[84] Dawkins is well known for his contempt for religious extremism, from Islamist terrorism^[85] to Christian fundamentalism; but he has also argued with liberal believers and religious scientists, from biologists Kenneth Miller^[86] and Francis Collins^[87] to theologians Alister McGrath and Richard Harries.^[88] Dawkins has stated that his opposition to religion is twofold, claiming it to be both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence.^[89] However, he describes himself as a "cultural Christian",^[90] and proposed the slogan "Atheists for Jesus".^[91]

Following the 11 September 2001 attacks, when asked how the world might have changed, Dawkins responded:

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!^[92]

Dawkins has especially risen to prominence in contemporary public debates relating science and religion since the publication of his 2006 book The God Delusion, which has achieved greater sales figures worldwide than any of his other works to date. Its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist, central to a recent rise in the popularity of atheistic literature.^[93][94] The God Delusion was praised by among others the Nobel laureates Sir Harold Kroto and James D. Watson and by psychologist Steven Pinker.^[95] In the book, Dawkins suggested that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.^[96] He sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination.^[16][97][98] These tools include the fight against certain stereotypes, and he has adopted the term Bright as a way of associating positive public connotations with those who possess a naturalistic worldview.^[98] Dawkins notes that feminists have succeeded in arousing widespread embarrassment at the routine use of "he" instead of "she". Similarly, he suggests, a phrase such as "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should be considered just as socially absurd as, for instance, "Marxist child": children should not be classified based on their parents' ideological beliefs.^[98] According to Dawkins, there is no such thing as a Christian child or a Muslim child, as children have about as much capacity to make the decision to become Christians or Muslims as they do to become Marxists.^[96]

In January 2006 Dawkins presented a two-part television documentary The Root of All Evil?, addressing what he sees as the malignant influence of religion on society. The title itself is one that Dawkins disliked, noting that religion shouldn't be regarded as the root of all evil.^[99] Critics have said that the programme gave too much time to marginal figures and extremists, and that Dawkins' confrontational style did not help his cause and exhibited similarities with the approaches of religious fundamentalists more than with the approaches of the dispassionate, analytic approach of 'hard' science;^[100][101] Dawkins rejected these claims, citing the number of moderate religious broadcasts in everyday media as providing a suitable balance to the extremists in the programmes. He further remarked that someone who is deemed an "extremist" in a religiously moderate country may well be considered "mainstream" in a religiously conservative one.^[102] The unedited recordings of Dawkins' conversations with Alister McGrath and Richard Harries, including material unused in the broadcast version, have been made available online by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.^[103]

Dawkins' work has been controversial, and a number of Christian thinkers have responded to it. For example, Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of The Dawkins Delusion and Dawkins' God) maintains that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently.^[104] In reply, Dawkins asks "do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?",^[105] and − in the paperback edition of The God Delusion − he refers to the American biologist PZ Myers, who has satirised this line of argument as "The Courtier's Reply".^[106] Dawkins had an extended debate with McGrath at the 2007 Sunday Times Literary Festival.^[107]

Dawkins argues that "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other".^[108] He disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria. In an interview with Time magazine, Dawkins said:

I think that Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf. Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.^[109]

Astrophysicist Martin Rees, who has described himself as an unbeliever who identifies with Christianity from a cultural perspective, has suggested that Dawkins' attack on mainstream religion is unhelpful.^[110] Regarding Rees' claim in his book Our Cosmic Habitat that "such questions lie beyond science", Dawkins asks "what expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?"^[111][112] Elsewhere, Dawkins has written that "there's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic, and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority or revelation."^[84] As examples of "good scientists who are sincerely religious", Dawkins names Arthur Peacocke, Russell Stannard, John Polkinghorne and Francis Collins, but says "I remain baffled ... by their belief in the details of the Christian religion."^{[113][114][115][116][117]} He has said that the publication of The God Delusion is "probably the culmination" of his campaign against religion.^[118]