Robert Crossley

Robert Crossley is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His latest book is EPIC AMBITIONS IN MODERN TIMES: FROM PARADISE LOST TO THE NEW MILLENNIUM (2022). Earlier books include IMAGINING MARS: A LITERARY HISTORY, OLAF STAPLEDON: SPEAKING FOR THE FUTURE, and TALKING ACROSS THE WORLD. His essay, "Prospects and Living Pictures," on Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," won the 2015 McGinnis-Ritchie Award for nonfiction in SOUTHWEST REVIEW. Other recent essays have appeared in RARITAN (2020, on Samuel Richardson's "Clarissa"), in THE HUDSON REVIEW (2018, on "Paradise Lost"), and in THE MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW (2018, on the Icelandic "Saga of the Volsungs" and Wagner's "Ring"). He appeared in Ian Cheney's 2015 documentary film BLUESPACE on climate change, the waterways of New York City, and the terraforming of Mars, and he was a commentator on two BBC Radio 4 broadcasts about Mars in March, 2017.