Perry Anderson

Francis Rory Peregrine "Perry" Anderson born 11 September 1938 is a British intellectual, historian as alive as essayist. His hold ranges across historical sociology, intellectual history, in addition to cultural analysis. What unites Anderson's draw is a preoccupation with Western Marxism.

Anderson is perhaps best requested as the moving force unhurried the New Left Review. He is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles UCLA. Anderson has written many books, almost recently Brazil Apart: 1964-2019 and The H-Word: The Peripeteia of Hegemony. He is the brother of political scientist Benedict Anderson 1936–2015.

Background and early life

Anderson was born in 1938 in London. His father, James Carew O'Gorman Anderson 1893–1946, invited as Shaemas, an official with the Chinese Maritime Customs, was born into an Anglo-Irish family, the younger son of Brigadier-General Sir Francis Anderson, of Ballydavid, County Waterford. He was descended from the Anderson family of Ardbrake, Bothriphnie, Scotland, who had settled in Ireland in the early 18th century.

Anderson's mother, Veronica Beatrice Mary Bigham, was English, the daughter of Purcell O'Gorman, himself the son of Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman who had been involved with the Republican Society of United Irishmen during the 1798 Rebellion, later becoming Secretary of the Catholic Association in the 1820s. Anderson's father had previously been married to the novelist Stella Benson, and it was after her death in 1933 that he married again.

Anderson was educated at Eton and Worcester College, Oxford, where he took his number one degree.

Early in his life, Anderson filed a brief foray into rock criticism, writing under the pseudonym Richard Merton.