Peter Martin (professor)
# Peter Martin (professor)

Peter Martin (born 1940) is an English literature scholar, biographer, and an 18th century garden historian. He was educated and has taught in the United States. He lives in England and Spain.

## Biography

Martin has been a professor at Miami University; the College of William & Mary; New England College in Arundale, West Sussex, England; and in the English department of Principia College (1993–2002). For several years, he was a garden historian for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

He has written several books on historical and biographical topics, including Samuel Johnson: A Biography, A Life of James Boswell, and about Edmond Malone. His has written about gardens and gardening in Williamsburg and Colonial Virginia, including British and American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century, The Gardening World of Alexander Pope and Pursuing Innocent Pleasures. He also created 'the dictionary wars' in American lexicography and A Dog Called Perth about the 21-year relationship with his dog.

Martin was born and lived in Argentina until the age of ten. He is a 1962 graduate of the Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. He has lived in a village in Sussex, England and El Campello, Spain.

## Published works

* Martin, Peter, ed. (1984). British and American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century: Eighteen Illustrated Essays. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-87935-105-2.
* Martin, Peter (1984). Pursuing Innocent Pleasures: The Gardening World of Alexander Pope. Archon Books. ISBN 978-0-208-02011-6.
* Martin, Peter (1991). The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-2053-5.
* Martin, Peter (1995). Edmond Malone, Shakespearean Scholar: A Literary Biography. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-61982-0.
* Martin, Peter (1999). A Life of James Boswell. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-81809-0.
* Martin, Peter (2001). A Dog Called Perth: The True Story of a Beagle. Orion Books. ISBN 978-1-55970-652-0.
* Martin, Peter, ed. (2003). The Essential Boswell: Selections from the Writings of James Boswell. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-60718-2.
* Martin, Peter (2008). Samuel Johnson: A Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-60719-9.
* Martin, Peter (2009). Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-03585-0.
* Martin, Peter (2019). The Dictionary Wars: The American Fight over the English Language. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-18891-1.
