Anthony Gibbs

Biography

Until his retirement in 1997, Emeritus Professor Tony Gibbs was Professor of English and Head of Department at Macquarie University. He was awarded the Victorian Rhodes Scholarship for 1956, and after graduation from Oxford University held lectureships in English at the Universities of Adelaide, Leeds and Stirling. He was Professor of English and Head of Department at the University of Newcastle, NSW from 1969-75.
He has served periods of office in the Australian Academy of the Humanities as Council Member, Vice-President and Editor. He has also served on the Executive Committees of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature and the Sydney branch of the English Association, and been a member of the Humanities and Social Sciences Panel of the Australian Research Council. In 2003 he was appointed as one of the founding Council members of the International Shaw Society. Professor Gibbs was a member of the founding editorial committee, and co-editor of the first numbers in 1963-64, of the Australian Journal, Southern Review.
His research ranges from the Renaissance to the twentieth-century, and he is known as a leading authority on the life and work of George Bernard Shaw. His Bernard Shaw: A Life, was co-published by the University Press of Florida and the University of New South Wales Press in 2005. The biography was runner-up for the Robert Rhodes Prize for a book on literature awarded by the American Conference for Irish Studies; shortlisted for the Nettie Palmer Prize for non-fiction in the Victorian Premier’s 2006 Literary Awards and for the General History Prize in the New South Wales Premier’s 2006 History Awards; included in the American Choice list of outstanding academic titles of 2006; highly commended in the 2007 Australian National Biography Award. Professor Gibbs was the first academic from Macquarie University to be elected to the Academy.