Ben Downing (writer)

Ben Downing (born April 17, 1967) is an American writer, editor, and teacher. Specializing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British social life and literature (with a particular emphasis on travel writing), he has written essays, articles, and reviews on figures such as Robert Louis Stevenson,[1] Duff Cooper,[2] Robert Byron,[3] Anthony Powell,[4] Peter Fleming,[5] Wilfred Thesiger,[6] and Patrick Leigh Fermor.[7] His biography of Janet Ross, who for many years was the doyenne of Florence’s Anglo-American colony, was published in 2013 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.[8]

Downing also writes poetry. His collection The Calligraphy Shop appeared in 2003, and he continues to publish poems in The Atlantic,[9] The New Criterion,[10] The Yale Review,[11] and elsewhere.

Since 1993 Downing has worked at Parnassus: Poetry in Review, of which he is currently the co-editor.[12] He has taught literary seminars and workshops at Columbia,[8] Bryn Mawr,[13] and the 92nd St. Y,[14] and he currently teaches a small private class, known as The English Salon, for advanced non-native speakers of English. He lives in New York City and graduated from Harvard University.[15]