Robert McCrum

Robert McCrum is an associate editor of the Observer. He was born and educated in Cambridge. For nearly 20 years he was editor-in-chief of the publishers Faber & Faber. He is the co-author of The Story of English (1986), and has written six novels. He was the literary editor of the Observer from 1996 to 2008, and has been a regular contributor to the Guardian since 1990

Latest

• The 100 best novels: No 24 – Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

  3 Mar 2014:A thrilling adventure story, gripping history and exploration of the Scottish character, Kidnapped is Robert Louis Stevenson’s masterpiece, writes Robert McCrum3 comments

• From bestseller to bust: is this the end of an author’s life?

  2 Mar 2014:Robert McCrum talks to award-winning authors who are struggling to make ends meet299 comments

• The 100 best novels: No 23 – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884/5)

  24 Feb 2014:Mark Twain’s tale of a rebel boy and a runaway slave seeking liberation upon the waters of the Mississippi remains a defining classic of American literature, writes Robert McCrum66 comments

• The 100 best novels: No 22 – The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1875)

  17 Feb 2014:Inspired by the author’s fury at the corrupt state of England, and dismissed by critics at the time, The Way We Live Now is recognised as his masterpiece, writes Robert McCrum35 comments

• Doris Kearns Goodwin: Obama’s guru, the biographer of presidents – and Miliband’s muse

  16 Feb 2014: Reagan, both Bushes, LBJ … American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has met them all, and now she has a book out on Teddy Roosevelt 4 comments

• The 100 best novels: No 21 – Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-2)

  10 Feb 2014:This cathedral of words stands today as perhaps the greatest of the great Victorian novels, writes Robert McCrum84 comments

• The 100 best novels: No 20 – Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868-9)

  3 Feb 2014:Louisa May Alcott’s highly original tale aimed at a young female market has never been out of print. Small wonder, writes Robert McCrum23 comments

• The 100 best novels: No 19 – The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868)

  27 Jan 2014:Wilkie Collins’s masterpiece, hailed as the greatest English detective novel, is a brilliant marriage of the sensational and the realistic, writes Robert McCrum33 comments

• The 100 best novels: No 18 – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)

  20 Jan 2014:Lewis Carroll’s brilliant nonsense tale is one of the most influential and best loved in the English canon, writes Robert McCrum30 comments

• Hanif Kureishi interview: ‘Every 10 years you become someone else’

  19 Jan 2014:Hanif Kureishi’s dazzling early success was followed by more troubling periods. Now, with The Last Word, has he finally pinned down who he really is, asks Robert McCrum102 comments

• The 100 best novels: No 17 – Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

  13 Jan 2014:Wise, funny and gripping, Moby-Dick still casts a long shadow over American literature, says Robert McCrum76 comments

• The 100 best novels: No 16 – The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

  6 Jan 2014:Nathaniel Hawthorne’s astounding book is full of intense symbolism and as haunting as anything by Edgar Allan Poe, writes Robert McCrum11 comments

• The 100 best novels: No 15 – David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)

  30 Dec 2013:David Copperfield marked the point at which Dickens became the great entertainer and also laid the foundations for his later, darker masterpieces, writes Robert McCrum38 comments

• French teen Oksa Pollock works her magic in vacuum left by Harry Potter

  28 Dec 2013: Global success is moving out of the realms of fantasy for Anne Plichota and Cendrine Wolf, co-creators of Oksa Pollock 79 comments

• The 100 best novels: No 14 – Vanity Fair by William Thackeray (1848)

  23 Dec 2013:William Thackeray’s masterpiece, set in Regency England, is a bravura performance by a writer at the top of his game, writes Robert McCrum66 comments