Starkie, Enid Mary (1897-1970)

Irish-born critic of French literature. She taught modern languages at the universities of Exeter and Oxford, producing studies of Baudelaire (1933), Rimbaud (1938), and André Gide (1954). She was instrumental in establishing the poetic reputation of Rimbaud, and is especially remembered for her critical studies of Gustave Flaubert, which were published in two volumes, in 1967 and 1971.

Starkie was born in Killiney, County Dublin. She was educated at Alexandra College, Dublin, Somerville College, Oxford, and the Sorbonne in Paris, where she completed a doctoral thesis on the Symbolist writer Emile Verhaeren.

In 1951 Starkie campaigned successfully for the Chair of Poetry at Oxford to be filled by a poet rather than a critic; as a result C S Lewis was defeated and Cecil Day-Lewis elected. She wrote an autobiographical account of her early life in A Lady's Child 1941. Her style of lecturing and literary criticism was criticized by Julian Barnes in his novel Flaubert's Parrot 1984.