Perry Anderson

Francis Rory Peregrine "Perry" Anderson (born 11 September 1938) is a British intellectual, historian and essayist. His work ranges across historical sociology, intellectual history, and cultural analysis. What unites Anderson's work is a preoccupation with Western Marxism. Anderson is perhaps best known as the moving force behind the New Left Review. He is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Anderson has written many books, most 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 London on 11 September 1938. His father, James Carew O'Gorman Anderson (1893–1946), known as Séamas, 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,<ref>"The Influence of Benedict Anderson".</</ref> the daughter of Trevor Bigham, who was the Deputy Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, 1914–1931. Anderson's grandmother, Frances, Lady Anderson, belonged to the Gaelic Gorman clan of County Clare and was the daughter of the Irish Home Rule Member of Parliament Major 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.