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.
Martin has been a professor of English Literature at Miami University; the College of William & Mary; New England College in Arundel, West Sussex, England; and Principia College (1993âÂÂ2002). For several years, he was Garden Historian for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.. He was also a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge, England.
He has written several books on historical and biographical topics, including Samuel Johnson: A Biography, A Life of James Boswell, and Edmond Malone: Shakespearean Scholar - a Literary Biography. His has also published 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 authored the highly acclaimed The Dictionary Wars about American lexicography and A Dog Called Perth about a 21-year relationship with his beagle.
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 earned his PhD from Syracuse University. He spends his time between West Sussex, England and El Campello, Spain.