Keith Botsford

Botsford died in Battersea, England, in August 2018.

Botsford retired as Professor Emeritus at Boston University in 2006. He lived his last years in Costa Rica in a RIBA Award-winning house on the Caribbean coast, designed by his architect son, Gianni Botsford.

Ceremony in Lone Tree, by Wright Morris. Publisher: Bison Books, September 1, 2001, 304 pages. Introduction by Keith Botsford

In 1971, Botsford returned to England, where he began a 20-year career as a sports journalist with The Sunday Times. He also became a Feature Writer and columnist on Gastronomy for The Independent, which he joined in its first week. Botsford was also a features writer and U.S. correspondent for the Italian newspaper La Stampa and also wrote about foreign affairs for Limes.

By the late 1970s, Botsford had combined his journalism with a post as Professor of Journalism and Lecturer in History at Boston University and a position as Assistant to the President John Silber.

In 1965, he moved back to England to become Deputy International Secretary of International P.E.N., where he organized the Bled Round Tables, the first to which Soviet writers were invited.

After serving at P.E.N., Botsford was invited to become the Director of the Ford Foundation's National Translation Center at the University of Texas, Austin (1965–1970), where he also was Professor of English.

In 1962, Botsford was invited by his University of Iowa friend, John Hunt, to join the Congress for Cultural Freedom. He worked with the Congress for Cultural Freedom spending three years in Latin America, based in Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City.

Botsford's work as a novelist is divided into two periods: the first four novels – The Master Race [1955], The Eighth-best-dressed-Man in the World [1957], Benvenuto [1961] and The March-Man [1964] – were either semi-autobiographical or political in nature; his later books (after he returned to fiction in 1989) include three major autobiographical works: O Brother! [2000], The Mothers [2002], and Death and the Maiden [2007] form a coherent trilogy about his brother, his early wives (and mothers) and, in the last, a reprise of The March-Man, his father. During this second period he also published a series of stories and novellas, described as "imaginary biographies", collected in Out of Nowhere [2000]. At the same time he also wrote five non-fiction books on sporting figures and four crime and espionage novels under the pseudonym I.I. Magdalen.

Botsford's academic career, often combined with administrative tasks, began at Bard College in 1953, where he met his lifelong friend Saul Bellow. In 1958, after two years in Europe living off translation, Botsford became assistant to the Rector of the University of Puerto Rico, taught Comparative Literature, founded the Honors Program and directed the University of Puerto Rico's television program.

From then on, Botsford was educated in California, and, after 1941, at Portsmouth Abbey in New England. He was briefly attracted to the monastic life, but then continued his education at Yale University, leaving in 1946 to enlist in the US Army, where he served in counter-intelligence. He finished his formal university education at the University of Iowa (A.B., 1950) and at Yale with a Master's in French Literature (A.M., 1952).

Keith Botsford (March 29, 1928 – August 19, 2018) was an American/European writer, Professor Emeritus at Boston University and editor of News from the Republic of Letters.

Keith Botsford was born in Brussels, Belgium of an expatriate American father and an Italian mother. His mother (1897–1994) was born Carolina Elena Rangoni-Machiavelli-Publicola-Santacroce, 2nd. daughter of the Marchesa Alda Rangoni. He grew up in a trilingual house, and was educated in English boarding schools. His father returned to the United States early in 1939, and together with his mother and brother, the Botsfords were expelled from Italy on the outbreak of World War II.