Biographical note

John Hardy completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford, UK, after being elected a "Prize Fellow" of Magdalen College in Oxford. A Queensland Rhodes Scholar, he retired from Bond University (Australia) as Emeritus Professor, where he had been Professor of Humanities, and Foundation Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Previously he had been Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto, Canada, and held chairs at the University of New England, Australia, and the Australian National University. During the 1980s he was Secretary of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has contributed to or edited more than a dozen books including three major works of literary criticism: Reinterpretations: Essays on Poems by Milton, Pope and Johnson; Jane Austen's Heroines: Intimacy in Human Relationships; and Shakespeare's Great Tragedies: Experiencing their Impact.