ABSTRACT
Edward W. Said was born in Jerusalem into a
Christian Arab family and was educated at St
George’s, the Eton of Mandate Palestine.
When the Saids moved to Egypt and settled
in Cairo, young Edward attended Victoria
College, a British-run school. Aged sixteen,
he was sent for further education at Mount
Hermon, a private school in Massachusetts,
where he blossomed academically, finding
the American attitude to learning more
imaginative and stimulating than the British
approach in Cairo. After a degree at
Princeton Said embarked on a PhD at
Harvard graduate school where he also won
the Bowdoin Prize for the best scholarly dis-
sertation written by a student – it was on
Joseph Conrad. In 1963, he was appointed
Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature
at Columbia University, New York where he
later became a full professor. In the ensuing
years he also served as a visiting professor at
Harvard, Yale, John Hopkins and Toronto
Universities.
