Joanna Richardson

[2] She was educated at the Downs School in Seaford, Sussex which was evacuated to St Ives, Cornwall during the Second World War's early phase.

[2] Nevertheless, Starkie's influence possibly helped Richardson gain re-admittance into St. Anne's College as an "advance student" and worked as the critic's research assistant on her biography of the poet Charles Baudelaire which was published in 1957.

[4] She began her career in 1952 by writing about Fanny Brawne after discovering "a cache of family photographs in some dusty archive".

For the biography Richardson spent a large amount of time researching family papers and visiting libraries.

[3] She died at Royal Free Hospital in Camden, London on 7 March 2008[1] at the age of 82 after living the last years of her life with Parkinson's disease.

[4] Her translations were considered by many to be her greatest work but her biographies were subject to mixed reception in the United Kingdom.