Keith Botsford


Keith Botsford was an American/European writer, Professor Emeritus at Boston University and editor of News from the Republic of Letters.

Biography

Keith Botsford was born in Brussels, Belgium of an expatriate American father and an Italian mother. His mother was born Carolina Elena Rangoni-Machiavelli-Publicola-Santacroce, 2nd. daughter of the Marchesa Alda Rangoni. He grew up in a trilingual house, and was educated in English boarding schools. His father returned to the United States early in 1939, and together with his mother and brother, the Botsfords were expelled from Italy on the outbreak of World War II.
From then on, Botsford was educated in California, and, after 1941, at Portsmouth Abbey in New England. He was briefly attracted to the monastic life, but then continued his education at Yale University, leaving in 1946 to enlist in the US Army, where he served in counter-intelligence. He finished his formal university education at the University of Iowa and at Yale with a Masters in French Literature.
Botsford then went on to study composition at the Manhattan School of Music, Japanese at Columbia University, and law at Holborn College in London. He was attracted to music and composed a number of chamber works, a ballet, choral music and part-songs. With John Houseman, he worked in film, theater and television.
Botsford's academic career, often combined with administrative tasks, began at Bard College in 1953, where he met his lifelong friend Saul Bellow. In 1958, after two years in Europe living off translation, Botsford became assistant to the Rector of the University of Puerto Rico, taught Comparative Literature, founded the Honors Program and directed the University of Puerto Rico's television program.
In 1962, Botsford was invited by his University of Iowa friend, John Hunt, to join the Congress for Cultural Freedom. He worked with the Congress for Cultural Freedom spending three years in Latin America, based in Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City.
In 1965, he moved back to England to become Deputy International Secretary of International P.E.N., where he organized the Bled Round Tables, the first to which Soviet writers were invited.
After serving at P.E.N., Botsford was invited to become the Director of the Ford Foundation's National Translation Center at the University of Texas, Austin, where he also was Professor of English.
In 1971, Botsford returned to England where he began a 20-year career as a sports journalist with The Sunday Times. He also became a Feature Writer and columnist on Gastronomy for The Independent, which he joined in its first week. Botsford was also a features writer and U.S. correspondent for the Italian newspaper La Stampa.
By the late 1970s, Botsford had combined his journalism with a post as Professor of Journalism and Lecturer in History at Boston University and a position as Assistant to the President John Silber.
Botsford retired as Professor Emeritus at Boston University in 2006. He lived his last years in Costa Rica in a RIBA Award-winning house on the Caribbean coast, designed by his architect son, Gianni Botsford.
Botsford had eight living children and sixteen grandchildren. He enjoyed smoking cigarettes and had been a pipe smoker.
Botsford died in Battersea, England, in August 2018.

As a novelist

Botsford's work as a novelist is divided into two periods: the first four novels – The Master Race , The Eighth-best-dressed-Man in the World , Benvenuto and The March-Man – were either semi-autobiographical or political in nature; his later books include three major autobiographical works: O Brother! , The Mothers , and Death and the Maiden form a coherent trilogy about his brother, his early wives and, in the last, a reprise of The March-Man, his father. During this second period he also published a series of stories and novellas, described as "imaginary biographies", collected in Out of Nowhere . At the same time he also wrote five non-fiction books on sporting figures and four crime and espionage novels under the pseudonym I.I. Magdalen.

Awards

Botsford received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and Moody Foundation, and a prize from the American Translators Association.

Published works

Books

Ceremony in Lone Tree, by Wright Morris. Publisher: Bison Books, September 1, 2001, 304 pages. Introduction by Keith Botsford

Magazines

;Founding editor
;Co-founding editors Keith Botsford & Saul Bellow
;Editor
Bostonia,
Poetry New York,
Grand Prix International,
Yale Poetry Review
;Contributing editor
Leviathan,
Stand,
The Warwick Review