Early life and education Richardson was born on 8 August 1925 at 36 West Heath Drive in
Golders Green,
London NW11. She was the daughter of Charlotte Elsa Benjamin with whom she established a close relationship because of her strong-artistic mind. Her father Frederick Richardson, was a
Captain in the
Intelligence Corps during the Second World War and became fluent in Italian by working with
prisoners of war in the country. Richardson was of Jewish descent. Richardson was brought up in
Hampstead Garden Suburb. 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. Richardson was unhappy during her school years at Downs School, but gained a university place to read Modern Languages at
St Anne's College, Oxford. Despite her degree going poorly, she studied for a
Bachelor of Letters degree and later an unsuccessful doctorate under literary critic
Dr Enid Starkie. 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.
Career and death She began her career in 1952 by writing about
Fanny Brawne after discovering "a cache of family photographs in some dusty archive". Richardson published her first French literature biography in 1958 called
Theophile Gautier: His Life & Times. For the biography Richardson spent a large amount of time researching family papers and visiting libraries. Having been active in the
Royal Society of Literature, she was elected as a fellow of the society in 1959, and she guided the council through financial difficulties and change between the early 1960s to the mid 1980s. Richardson wrote biographies on
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Starkie and
Victor Hugo in 1962, 1973 and 1976. Outside of literary work, she campaigned on issues relating to North London and wrote and broadcast on
BBC Radio, where she translated plays from French, as well as conducting plays and presented features on
Radio 3 and
Radio 4. Richardson contributed to various magazines and newspapers, including
The Times,
The Times Literary Supplement,
Modern Language Review and
Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin. She did a large amount of work for the
Keats House Museum and led an unsuccessful campaign to get
Camden London Borough Council to recognise its duty to maintain the museum's condition. In 1987 Richardson was appointed
Chevalier de I'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Richardson earned her the
Prix Goncourt de la Biographie in 1989 on her biography of
Judith Gautier, the first time an English writer was awarded the accolade. She was surprised to be selected by the
Académie Goncourt for the
Prix Goncourt and noted in her acceptance speech that the award's creators did not like Britain nor women. Richardson received a
Bachelor of Letters (BLitt) degree from the
University of Oxford in 2005. She died at
Royal Free Hospital in
Camden, London on 7 March 2008 at the age of 82 after living the last years of her life with Parkinson's disease. In her lifetime she had written 21 biographies, and was working on a biography of
Gustave Flaubert at the time of her death. On 19 March, Richardson was cremated at
Kensal Green Cemetery. ==Legacy==