Peter France was born in Northern Ireland of Welsh parents and has lived at various places in England, France and Canada. He is now based in Edinburgh, where he was professor of French from 1980 to 2000. A Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he has written many studies of French, Russian and comparative literature, and is the editor of the New Oxford Companion to Literature in French  and of the Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation and general editor of the five-volume Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. He has translated French and Russian prose texts as well as several volumes of Russian poetry – Blok and  Pasternak (both with Jon Stallworthy), Batyushkov, Baratynsky, Lermontov, Mayakovsky, Mandelstam, and in particular Gennady Aygi, including Selected Poems 1954-1994 (Angel/NorthWestern), Child-and-Rose (New Directions), Field-Russia (New Directions), Winter Revels (Rumor Press), and a book edited by Aygi, the Anthology of Chuvash Poetry..