Literary critic Sir Frank Kermode dies aged 90
Acclaimed British literary critic Sir Frank Kermode has died at the age of 90, it has been announced.
The London Review of Books, which started in 1979 on his suggestion, said he passed away on Tuesday in Cambridge.
Sir Frank published Shakespeare's Language in 2001 and also wrote books about Spenser and Donne.
He was knighted in 1991, the first literary critic to be honoured since William Empson.
Alan Samson, Sir Frank's publisher, told The Guardian newspaper that he thought the literary critic was a "one off".
He added: "He knew he had exceptional gifts, but there was a modest manner about him.
"He knew he was smarter than everyone else, but he was this pipe-smoking, beguiling man who listened to what you had to say.
"It's the wreath of pipe smoke and the benign smile and wisdom which I'm really going to miss," said Mr Samson.
He said the work he thought Sir Frank would be remembered for The Sense of An Ending, his collection of lectures on the relationship of fiction to concepts of apocalyptic chaos and crisis.
Sir Frank also wrote a study of the Romantic movement until poet WB Yeats.
His last book, published last year, was on the novelist EM Forster.