GROSS, JOHN JACOB

GROSS, JOHN JACOB (1935– ), English author and literary critic. Gross was born in London and studied at Cambridge, becoming a Fellow of King's College. After a distinguished literary career he was appointed literary editor of the New Statesman in 1972, and in 1974 became editor of the Times Literary Supplement, the authoritative and prestigious weekly magazine of literary criticism. He held this post for more than 15 years. He wrote widely on Jewish writers and Jewish themes in literature, and published The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (1973) and James Joyce (1970). Subsequently, Gross was theater critic of the London Daily Telegraph. Later works include an autobiography, A Double Thread: Growing Up English and Jewish in London (2002) and a study of Shylock: Four Hundred Years in the Life of a Legend (2002). (Michael Wallach / William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)