Robert Fraser was educated at Winchester Cathedral's ancient choir school and at the universities of Sussex and London. His twenty-seven published books include biography, memoir, poetry, fiction, drama, and academic studies of Marcel Proust (1994), Sir James Frazer (1990), Victorian Quest Romance (2000), the ancient roots of biography (2021), and the international book trade (2008). He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007, Fellow of the English Association in 2013, and Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2005. He has lectured in universities in Ghana, Leeds, London and in Trinity College, Cambridge where he was Director of Studies in English until 1993. He is currently Emeritus Professor of English in the Open University, and runs a course on Biography Writing at the CityLit in London. Twice married, he lives in London and Oxfordshire.