Richards, I(vor) A(rmstrong) (1893-1979)

English literary critic. He collaborated with C K Ogden on two books and wrote Principles of Literary Criticism (1924). With Ogden, he founded the simplified form of English known as Basic English. In 1939 he went to Harvard University, USA, where he taught detailed attention to the text and had a strong influence on contemporary US literary criticism.

He was a leading authority on semantics (the meaning of words) and his emphasis on the words on the page became the cornerstone of the US New Criticism movement. Other critical works are Science and Poetry (1926) and Practical Criticism (1929).

Richards was born in Sandbach, Cheshire, and studied at Cambridge University. He was a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, from 1926-29 and 1931-36, a visiting professor of T'sing Hua University in Beijing in 1929, and professor of English at Harvard from 1944-63.