Helen Gardner (critic) Cambridge offered Gardner the new chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, but she declined, in part because she had heard that the university's first choice, C.S. Lewis, had changed his mind about refusing the position. In 1966, she became Merton Professor of English literature in the University of Oxford, the first woman to hold this chair. Her specialist areas were T. S. Eliot, the metaphysical poets, Milton and religious poetry, with many essays published on these subjects, as well as on literary criticism itself. She edited "The New Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1950" (1972) and "The Metaphysical Poets". She
Eric Robertson (literary critic) Eric Robertson (literary critic) Eric Robertson is Professor of Modern French Literary and Visual Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research focuses primarily on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and the visual arts, with particular emphasis on European Modernism and the avant-gardes. He is the author of "Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor" (2006), "Writing Between the Lines", a study of the bilingual novelist and essayist René Schickele (1995), and various articles and chapters on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and visual arts. He is also the co-editor of "Yvan Goll - Claire Goll: Texts and Contexts" (1997),