Calder, Robert L. (1941-)

Robert Calder.

Robert Calder

Robert Lorin Calder is an award-winning author and an accomplished scholar of modern British literature at the University of Saskatchewan. Born in Moose Jaw on April 03, 1941, he grew up in Saskatoon and completed his honours and master’s degrees in English at the University of Saskatchewan. In 1970, after earning a PhD from the University of Leeds in England, he returned to the University of Saskatchewan to become a professor of English and a specialist in 20th-century British fiction and drama. As a writer, Calder has distinguished himself through numerous books. He is also considered a world authority on W. Somerset Maugham, about whom he has authored two books: W. Somerset Maugham and the Quest for Freedom (1972), and Willie: The Life of W. Somerset Maugham (1989). The latter work is an award-winning biography that earned Calder the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. He is also well known for his expertise in British and Canadian wartime Literature. His recent books, A Richer Dust: Family, Memory and the Second World War (2004) and Beware the British Serpent: The Role of British Propaganda in the United States, 1939–1945 (2004), reflect on the social impacts of World War II. In 2003, A Richer Dust won the John V. Hicks Manuscript Award for excellence in literary non-fiction and in 2004, Beware the British Serpent won two Saskatchewan Book Awards. Calder also co-authored the popular 1984 book on the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Rider Pride: The Story of Canada’s Best-Loved Football Team.

Iain Stewart