Daisy Dunn

Daisy Dunn
Born
London, United Kingdom
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Author and classicist
Academic background
EducationIbstock Place School
The Lady Eleanor Holles School
Alma materSt Hilda's College, Oxford (BA)
Courtauld Institute of Art (MA)
University College London (PhD)
ThesisPrometheus, Artist of the Ages: Prometheus' Function in Ekphrastic Contexts in Latin Literature and North Italian Renaissance Stanzini (2013)
Websitewww.daisydunn.co.uk

Daisy Florence Dunn is an English author and classicist.

Early life and education

Daisy Dunn was born in London and attended Ibstock Place School in Southwest London and The Lady Eleanor Holles School in Hampton on an academic scholarship.[1] She graduated in Classics from St Hilda's College, Oxford in 2009, and won a scholarship to study for an MA in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, London, specialising in Titian, Venice and Renaissance Europe.[2][3] She was awarded a PhD from University College London with a thesis exploring ekphrasis in Greek and Latin poetry and sixteenth-century Italian painting.[4][5] She was long-listed in 2015 for the international Notting Hill Editions Prize for the essay "An Unlikely Friendship".[6]

Career

In 2016 she published her first two books, a biography of the Latin love poet Catullus and a new translation of his poems.[7][8] The biography, entitled Catullus' Bedspread, received endorsements from Boris Johnson, Robert Harris and Tom Holland and was described as a "superb portrait" in The Sunday Times.[9] Dunn's translation of one of Catullus' expletives resulted in a series of letters in The Times Literary Supplement and an article in The Times.[10][11] In a 2016 article in The Guardian Simon Schama included Dunn in his list of leading female historians.[12]

Dunn's 2019 dual biography of Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny, published as The Shadow of Vesuvius in the US, was a New York Times Editor's Choice, a Waterstones Best History Book of 2019, and a Book of the Year in several publications. Dunn was interviewed ahead of its release by The Sunday Times.[13]

Also in 2019, Dunn published an anthology of ancient stories in English translation, Of Gods and Men: 100 Stories from Ancient Greece and Rome, for which she was interviewed by Paul Ross on TalkRadio.[14][15] A month later, she released Homer, part of a new "expert" series of Ladybird books.

Dunn is a regular commentator, critic and columnist, writing for The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph and Literary Review, among other publications. She has contributed to BBC Radio 4, the BBC World Service, TalkRadio, BBC.com (Culture)[16] and BBC 2, for which she participated in the 2016 Christmas University Challenge for notable alumni, with her team winning the series. In 2018 and 2019 she presented two short films on Ancient Wisdom for BBC Ideas.[17]

In 2020, Dunn was awarded the Classical Association Prize,[18] which recognises efforts to bring the classics to public attention.[19]

Dunn's sixth book, Not Far From Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars, a group biography of the classicists Maurice Bowra, E. R. Dodds and Gilbert Murray, was published in March 2022. In The Times, Laura Freeman wrote of Dunn's "gift for making the arcane accessible and the forbidding more friendly" and the book as being "a love letter to learning".[20] It was described by Leo Robson in the New Statesman as "Lucid, agile, juicy, nuanced".[21] It was listed as a book of the year by Waterstones,[22] The Independent, and The Daily Telegraph.

Works

Dunn is the author of:

  • Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet (HarperCollins/Harper Press, 2016) (UK Hardback ISBN 978-0007554331 and US Hardback ISBN 978-0062317025)
  • The Poems of Catullus: A New Translation (HarperCollins, 2016) (UK Paperback) ISBN 978-0007582969
  • In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny (William Collins, 2019) ISBN 978-0008211097[23] (US title: The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny (Liveright, 2019) ISBN 978-1631496394[24])
  • Of Gods and Men: 100 Stories from Ancient Greece and Rome (Head of Zeus, 2019) ISBN 978-1788546744
  • Homer illus. Angelo Rinaldi (Ladybird Books, Michael Joseph, 2019) ISBN 978-0718188283
  • Not Far From Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2022) ISBN 978-1474615570
  • The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World (Viking, 2024)[25] ISBN 978-0593299661 LCCN 2024-23267

References

  1. ^ Dunn, Daisy (14 March 2015). "Reading about your school is always a terrible idea". The Spectator. Archived from the original on 20 December 2016. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
  2. ^ Dunn, Daisy (2016). Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet. London, England: HarperCollins. p. 312. ISBN 978-0007554331.
  3. ^ "Oxford University Department of Classics". University of Oxford. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
  4. ^ Dunn, Daisy (2016). Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet. London: HarperCollins. p. 312. ISBN 978-0007554331.
  5. ^ "Research Students: Completed Theses". University College London Department of Greek & Latin. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
  6. ^ "Notting Hill Editions Essay Prize 2015 longlist". Notting Hill Editions. Archived from the original on 17 March 2016. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
  7. ^ Madden, Chris (29 January 2016). "Boris Johnson and Tatler help author launch her debut books". Dorking and Leatherhead Advertiser. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  8. ^ "Daisy Dunn's book launch party". Tatler. 22 January 2016. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  9. ^ Hart, Christopher. "Catullus' Bedspread by Daisy Dunn and The Poems of Catullus, translated by Daisy Dunn". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  10. ^ "Letters to the Editor". The Times Literary Supplement. 12 May 2016. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  11. ^ Kidd, Patrick (12 May 2016). "Feast of Filth". The Times, TMS Diary.
  12. ^ "'Big Books by blokes about battles': Why is history still written mainly by men?". The Guardian. 6 February 2016. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  13. ^ Smith, Julia Llewellyn. "Daisy Dunn put a sexed-up Catullus among the pigeons. Now it's Pliny's turn". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  14. ^ "Of Gods and Men: 100 Stories". Daisy Dunn: Author, Historian & Journalist. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  15. ^ "talkRADIO listen again | talkRADIO". talkradio.co.uk. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  16. ^ "The truth behind Ancient Rome's most controversial woman". BBC.com (Culture). Retrieved 15 May 2021.
  17. ^ "Five absurd beliefs from the ancient world". BBC Ideas. 9 January 2019. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  18. ^ "Daisy Dunn awarded the Classical Association Prize 2020 – Georgina Capel". Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  19. ^ Marshall, Sharon (2020). "CA Prize-winner 2020: Daisy Dunn" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 September 2020. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  20. ^ Freeman, Laura (12 March 2022). "Not Far from Brideshead by Daisy Dunn review — hearties and arties in Oxford's Arcadia". The Times. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  21. ^ Robson, Leo (4 May 2022). "Gilbert Murray: The Oxford Don who made Greek chic". New Statesman. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  22. ^ Skinner, Mark (14 September 2022). "The Best Books of 2022: Biography". Waterstones.
  23. ^ Harry Sidebottom (5 July 2019). "In The Shadow of Vesuvius by Daisy Dunn review: an irresistible life of Pliny". The Telegraph. Retrieved 4 August 2019.
  24. ^ McGrath, Charles (10 December 2019). "They Were the Renaissance Men of Roman Antiquity". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  25. ^ Gold, Lyta (6 August 2024). "review of The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World by Daisy Dunn". The New York Times.