University of Cambridge
Robert Lethbridge previously taught at Cambridge and Royal Holloway, University of London. He is primarily an authority on French Naturalism. Most of his published work is devoted to Maupassant and Zola, including editions of a number of their novels for OUP’s World Classics series. He is on the editorial board of the specialist French journal, Les Cahiers naturalistes. In recent years, in both teaching and research, he has been developing his interest in the relationship between literature and the visual arts in 19th century France. He has written, in particular, on Manet and the writers of time, as well as giving a public lecture at the Royal Academy in the context of the 2013 exhibition of Manet’s portraits. Prof. Lethbridge has focused much of his research on the creative interchanges between Zola and the Impressionists. His current projects include an edition of Maupassant’s short stories (in translation) and a new critical edition of Zola’s Écrits sur l’art for Classiques Garnier. He was made Commandeur des Palmes Académiques by the French government in 2012.