John Carey (1934–2025) was a literary critic and academic who held the Merton Professorship of English Literature at the University of Oxford from 1975 to 2002 and served as chief book reviewer for The Sunday Times. Born in Barnes, west London, he read English at St John's College, Oxford, and wrote his doctorate on Donne. His books include The Violent Effigy (1973), John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (1981), The Intellectuals and the Masses (1992) and What Good Are the Arts? (2005). He twice chaired the judges of the Booker Prize. A Little History of Poetry (2020) and 100 Poets: A Little Anthology (2021) came late in a long career of writing about poetry rather than writing it.
